April Fool's & Easter Greetings,

We had a wonderful 12th Anniversary event and are still dealing with many orders that came in from those not able to shop in person. Being a brick and mortar store in the 21st Century has its challenges and I truly appreciate your continued support of the shop, whether it's by coming into the store or shopping with us from afar. We're hoping there will be many more anniversaries in our future.

We will be closed Sunday in celebration of Easter but will be open our usual hours on Saturday and then again starting Monday.

Recently, my friend Tricia (of Plymouth Jacket fame) wrote an article on her blog about the choices we make with where we purchase goods, especially in our world of needlework. It was a great article and is worth taking a moment to read.

One thing I think is important as well is that the demise of many of the box store's needlework departments is in fact, not a good thing. Yes, you can buy floss cheaper from them than I can buy it wholesale (one of the points in Tricia's article) but the box stores are in many ways, the place where new stitchers are exposed to needlework. As with all things, it's a cycle for the box stores. If something is popular they jump on the band wagon - hence their heavily investing in knitting when it became hugely popular. But as any segment declines in dollars for them they reduce their investment. So while box stores compete with us on prices for many items, they do serve as a starting ground for many stitchers. I hope they will continue to invest in needlework again in the future as it's been pretty sparse the past year or two.

Independent stores like ours can offer the breadth and service the box stores can't, and we obviously need your spending dollars to stay in business. But I believe we need a mix of both to keep the needlearts industry growing and new stitchers in particular, discovering what we love to do.
 

 

Over the weekend Kathy Barrick announced on her blog that she is closing Carriage House Samplings at the end of 2010. The current plan is that we will be able to order in-print charts through the end of June. Between July - December she'll sell what she has left on her Etsy site, then she's completely done. Kathy indicated she had other things she would like to do beyond designing. Needless to say, we're very disappointed at this news. We knew there would be no more in the Hawk Run Hollow series but it's sad to see such a final end of a wonderful design business.
 

If there any of her in-print designs that you're looking for, now is the time to order them. We'll do a last call in early June to remind everyone, but you might look through her design catalog (you can find them either through Hoffman Distributing or Norden Crafts) and let us know what you want.
 

I spent a couple of evenings this week finishing up the front of my Zecca purse. All of the stitching on the front is done now, although it needs to get blocked. If you click on the photo to the left you'll end up at my blog and you can see a larger photo of it and some of the crop circles. I have started on the back of the bag, which has much more pattern to it (photo courtesy of Zecca). I am going to do more patterned stitches on the back as well, carrying over the Byzantine stitch background where I can. The bird is entirely stitched in Baroque Silk, which had really great colors to match the canvas.
 
Happy Stitching,

Cathe
Cathe's Personal Blog
...and Debi, Leila, Jennifer, Ali, Mary, Mary Frances, Caroline, Susan and Margaret