Del Rey B.'s Jar

Are you ready for some F U N ?  Today I found a wonderful treasure at one of our local antique shops.  It was a giant jar of really neat vintage sewing items.  Just look at that lid!  Did the owner of this jar catch a caterpillar and watch it turn into a beautiful butterfly one day?

 

I am supposing the jar belonged to 

Del Rey B. because her name is written on the back of

a ruler... So whether all these goodies were hers or her

mother's, grandmother's or her daughter's, I am calling it Del Rey B.'s Jar.

I could hardly stand the excitement... hours later I am still smiling!

So I decided it would be fun to have a little c o n t e s t !

The person who guesses the exact amount of items in the jar will win a cool prize!

I'm not sure what the prize will be yet, but it will be inspired

by vintage and thriftiness and chosen or made especially for the winner!

The rules are simple:

You can guess once.  

If more than one person guesses the correct number, we will have a random drawing of those who guessed it right on the nose.

Sound fun?  OK! Let's do it!!

The jar is gallon sized.

I will give you a few more photos to look at so you 

can make a good guess!

The view above will be one side and here are the three other

quarter turns of the jar:

 

Bottom of the jar...

Top...

It was such a neat thing to empty the jar and pull the contents out one by one... I will even go as far as saying reverent because I can imagine how precious things such as needles and scissors were so many years ago. Most of us have no idea what it is like to go without and feel driven to save every little scrap. 

This ball of string is many little pieces of string all wound together. I have heard stories about people who saved bits of string, but I have never actually seen one of these balls. It has stirred up lots of thoughts about excess, re-purposing & not wasting...

I am fascinated that she would have saved a small length of tan thread and wrapped it over the blue - just in case she might need it later.

This needle case is beautiful!

 Are you catching a few "clues"?  The jar was not filled with as many buttons as I thought it would be.

One other tip... if the needles or items were in a package, it counted as one item. I only counted loose items, except a couple of button cards that had a few buttons on them- each button was counted. If a needle was tucked into a spool of thread, I counted it, too!

 Good luck with your guess! 

The contest will be open until April 12th at 6:00 PM mountain time.

Use it up, wear it out.

Make it do or do without.

Photo Shoot Special!

I believe the highlight of my business is meeting all the wonderful, creative, fun and inspiring people I get to meet!  A few weeks ago Stephanie came over to get some wool for some props she was making for her business, Stephanie Hyde Photography.  She asked if we ever let people use the studio for photo shoots and I told her no one had ever asked, but that she was welcome to come and shoot away!

She is having a special until the end of the month ~ $50.00 for a photo shoot! check out her blog HERE! She does a beautiful job and is such a delightful person!

Here are a few of the pictures she took on Monday:

Beautiful photos and a beautiful mama-to-be!

Admiration

This post is l o n g overdue!  It's a story that happened back in December of 2010.  I made brief mention of it on our family blog and never took the time to get the photos uploaded. I have finally finished uploading them. With the class our guild had with Kerry Green this past week, I was inspired to share this.  It seems many of us have fallen in love with embroidery and embellishing wool projects.  As you will see, Sally should wear a crown in this arena. She is a master at it!

Mark & I have made several pilgrimages to Boston. We love it back there. We love the American History, the quaint architecture, the amazing restaurants and my family roots from the New England area. My mom grew up about an hour south of Boston. This December Mark attended a conference there and we went with our dear friends. It was their first trip to Boston and we had a blast seeing it with new excitement.

Months before the trip I was doing some poking around online to see what was going on while we would be back there. To my surprise and delight I discovered one of my favorite artisans, Sally Mavor, would have some of her work on exhibit at Danforth Museum near Boston and she would be there doing a book signing while we were there! What a treat that day was! My friend Stacey & I got ourselves train tickets to Framingham and after one wrong turn and a walk through a dicey neighborhood, we got ourselves turned around and enjoyed the sweetest afternoon. Photos do not do justice to her incredible work. Seeing it firsthand was remarkable and I was even quoted in a local newspaper article!

We looked around the gallery while we waited for her lecture to begin.  It was so  captivating to study the beautiful three dimensional illustrations!  They were incredible! 

She was very warm and gracious as she chatted with us and signed books.

It was so fun to listen to her talk about her inspiration and the journey this project took her on.

If you have a few minutes - check out this link on Sally's blog.  It will give you a peek into her studio and her thoughts.