On Vacation

After attending two church conferences this past week, I am ready for a few days of vacation in the beautiful Smokey Mountains.  I look forward to exploring the crafts native to this part of our country and picking up new ideas to try. 
 As we drove from Independence, Mo. to Tennessee, I appreciated the beautiful shades of green in the grass and trees.  The closer we got to the Smokey Mountains, the more diverse the colors of greens became.  Frequently along the sides of the interstate they would be accented by trees with white and red blossoms.  Our Creator certainly painted some beautiful scenery.  

What goes around comes around--last installment.

Doesn't it seem like the more things change, the more they are the same?  Look at this article about the importance of good highways written 100 years ago.

Unfortunately, the bottom half of the article is pasted over with another patter.

In the last blog I showed this page with flat pictures of my great grandmother's finished beaded collars.   Here is another picture of the first one on a form so you can see the detail better.

And now we come to the point of this series of blogs.   I am constantly amazed at even though the mediums may be different, many of the designs are very similar.  Below, on the left is the necklace my grandmother made.  On the right is a tatted necklace that was inspired by the beaded one.   I still need to block it so that it will hold its shape better, but I liked the way it turned out.

The main challenge was finding beads that were large enough to  let the tatting needle go through them.   I used large glass beads (I think about a size 6 or 8) that I found in a wire and bead jewelry kit from a JoAnn's Store.  The beads on the picots at the outside edge of the tatting were threaded onto the ball end of the thread before I began the final row,.  I found that I needed to use an thin embroidery needle instead of a regular tatting needle in order to be able to go through the small seed beads that I used for the finishing row.

The thread I used was size 10. I would like to try it again using size 20 thread to see how it would compare.  I think the actual size would be even more similar.  The trick would be to work with the beads.  Would I need smaller beads?  We will see what kinds of challenges it brings.

Have a terrific day.

Signs of the Times--only ambitious young men
 can become Watkins Salesmen

This isn't a candy recipe page, but I found it rather interesting to scan over.  If my great-grandmother were living in today's world, I suspect that she would be an ambitious young woman.  She was in her own time as her time would allow.   She graduated from High School (Normal School) and was qualified to go and teach school.  My daughter now has the watch that was given to her as a gift when she graduated.  It was on a pin and also had a link so it could be worn as a necklace.









She was an avid reader, poetry writer, and crafts person.  Here is a page in her Watkins catalog scrapbook and photos of the necklaces that she made from the patterns.

I still have both of these bead necklaces.  I had to do some repair work on one where the thread had rotted and the beads had fallen off.  













I suspect that when Grandma made them, they were secured with a velvet ribbon.   I made the red and the teal colored bead chains for them.










Then and now....continued again.

In my previous blog I mentioned the scrapbook of art patterns my great grandmother kept by glueing newspaper clippings into a 1913 Watkins catalog.

It is fun to look through those pages that did not have something pasted on them.  Some have almanac information for each month of the year.   There are ads for the Watkins products  but often the 'ad' is in the article for how to use the product.   It is interesting to read some of the 'medicinal' ads,  with the products being good for self diagnosis of what ails the reader. 

Other pages have household tips and recipes.   Check out this page of recipes for different kinds of candy.

 

 Some of these sound diet breakingly delicious.  Maybe you would like to try one.  Then, as you sit back and enjoy, think back to what life might have been like in 1913.

 

...to be continued.

 

 

 



Have you ever run across a very old, more than 'vintage' magazine unexpectedly?  Yesterday as I was cleaning my workroom I rediscovered an old 1913 Watkins sales catalog.  It came from my great-grandmother.  Why would I keep something like that?  Well, my great-grandmother was a very frugal person, and nothing went to waste if it could be recycled into something else.  She used this magazine as her scrapbook where she cut and pasted patterns for crocheting, tatting, and beading that she had cut out from newspapers.  I now have a diary of sorts of that part of her life.  

...to be continued.

I feel like I am studying to for an MBA with all the reading I am doing to learn about on line marketing and social networking.  For someone who is new to all this, it is a lot to take in.   Part of the challenge is keeping it in balance with the creative aspects of the business so that I actually have something to sell. 

After getting my different boards set up on Pinterest, my computer has decided that I really don't need to go there.   My laptop will not let me log in even though my 10 year old (and very slow) desktop will.  I don't know how to get back in and access or even pin my own work to my boards without starting all over again.   Then what happens to the old boards?   Social media, wonderful as it is, is puzzling.   My laptop is even more so.

After a month with a very steep learning curve and a lot of time spent trying to learn the ins and outs of this thing called social media, I have my shop up and running.   Check out www.goodsmiths.com/darrington-designs.   I am now trying to the pictures of my jewelry loaded into the store, but I am struggling with learning how to get them in a format that the store will read.   I suspect, just like working with Facebook, Pinterest, and the like, it just takes a little time and practice.   It will come.  I am ready for that to happen because right now I am spending more time at the computer than I am actually making things for the store. 

Finally.  The computer is out of the repair shop and back to running. :)

Still no laptop computer.  Seems it didn't get a little virus.   It got several big ones.  Hopefully I will have it back on Saturday.  The twelve year old desktop that I am trying to workon right now is very slow, and often will not even download or upload pictures.   I guess I am being taught patience---or something.

Frustration!  I just deleted all my documents on my computer.   Hope I can find some guru who is able to reclaim them from where ever they go. 

Whew!  I am so new to this selling on line.  Just when I think I have all the business pieces set up something new comes along.   However, thanks to the tremendous help of my daughter who works with computers all day long,  I think I am just about there.  Once the store site is set up, I will be posting more pictures and letting you know where the items are available. 

I know this.  I would rather be making the items then setting all this up.  Oh, well,  Patience is a virture   I am just practicing. . .