Righteous Babes (and babies) spotted in Northeast Kingdom

From the desk of Nora the red-nosed milliner

We had a rollicking good time sans kiddies at the Burklyn holiday craft fair this weekend, despite Sam’s fierce baby withdrawal and Nora battling a cold of epic proportions (our heartfelt thanks to Kenny, Yaya and Susan for their valiant childcare!). 

Sam repossessed Kenny’s b-day fedora and looked righteously hot in it. Check her out with a passing dumpling who graciously modeled our matching baby chapeau!    

The squeals and coos were heard for miles.

We never get tired of the alchemy that happens when the right person pulls the right hat down at juuuust the right angle.  Suddenly the charms of both hat and wearer are amplified all out of proportion to our expectations.  That gentle older woman suddenly exudes jaunty charisma; the shyly affianced brunette is transformed licketysplit into a wicked elfin beauty.  It’s just so darn fun. 

We’re on to the SOWA Holiday Market in Boston (http://www.sowaholidaymarket.com/index.html) this coming weekend & madly trying to pump up the volume of our delightfully depleted inventory.  Who knew there would be a minor feeding frenzy over cocktail hats in the Northeast kingdom (thank you Kate Middleton)?  It just goes to show:  you really, really never know WHAT you’ll find in them thar hills.

Getting ready for Holiday shows

Aside from preening before our (imagined) cyber audience, Sam, the sheep and I (yeah - it's Nora Too-much-time-on-her-hands Swan writing again - what of it?) are clip-clopping madly along, trying to get everything ready for our up coming shows.  The first is Moonlight Madness here in Brandon tomorrow; then Burklyn this weekend (Dec. 4&5) and the SOWA Holiday Market in Boston next weekend. Woo hoo!

We spent way too long yesterday making a big fort in Sam's living room (sorry - no pictures were taken) trying to imagine how our 8"x8" booth will be set up.  We want it to be warm and welcoming, but we're trying to streamline the look a little compared to last show. 

 I liked the show Sam arranged herself best so far:

Kinda folksy-farmy and gentle right?
Tricky part is, we have a smaller space, and more stuff to show!  We now have a bunch of adult hats and cocktail headbands to arrange amongst the baby and kid goodies.  We're trying not to give our dear customers aesthetic whiplash.
Sam has promised to shoot me with her freeze-ray/cattle prod if I try to cram too much on the tables.
Nora: "Dum da dum dum dum..."
Sam: tzzzt
Nora: Yeow! 
Roxy: mehh-heh-heh
Simon: Bah-hah-haaah
May (basso profundo): muahhh-ha-hahhhh

Evidence that the herd has been getting up to some clandestine shows of their own...

The princess and the pauperette

I dunno... (Nora here, in-house Random Immaterial Concerns Specialist); sometimes I worry that Sam gets the short end of the stick in our endeavors.  To whit: yesterday yours truly spent her time strolling about Brandon and dining on (akk, shall I say it?  Ok: LAMB but not one of ours!) with a trio of glamorous and witty out-of-town visitors.  Meanwhile Sam spent the day breathlessly disassembling the wooden sheep shelter, hauling it half a mile down the road and reassembling said shelter in the new pasture.  Our phone conversations went something like this:

Sam (gale-force winds howling in the background):  "Nora?"  (pant pant) "The sheep's shelter blew down and... (inaudible)... taking down the...(muffled thuds)...

Nora (piano music tinkling pleasantly in the background):  "Oh, hello daaahling!  You'll never guess who I'm with..." (clinking of fine stemware)

Sam (urgent bleating): "five kids"... (inaudible)... "rescue crew"... (thump, crash) ... "emergency ceasarian" ... "armageddon..."

Nora (genteel laughter) : "Tut tut...  Simply ghastly...  must run... muah...

Simon: "Baaaahh..."

Roxy: "Blehhhh"

May (basso profundo): Muuuuuuhhhhh"

 Old shelter RIP

Adornment opens its doors!

Our friend, the brilliant jewelry designer Rebecca Zelis, just opened the doors to her tres chic studio/gallery called Adornment in Brandon Vermont and our showiest hat sold right away!  Eep!

We never got good pictures of the finished hat, but here it is "in process".  Kinda flashy, no?  Our high-society border-Leicester ewe, May contributed the wool.  She is so proud!

Adornment is a lovely little gem, if you're ever in Brandon, VT.  Or check out the website: http://adornmentvt.com/  

Here's our display so far.  Doesn't it look like a giant cake stand?

Origins

By Sam not-the-farmer's-wife Stone:
At lunch one day, my 3-year-old son Luca looked down at his plate and asked, “Mommy, who made this pasta?”  Since moving to Vermont from Manhattan a year earlier our family had plunged headlong into mini-farm mode, raising sheep, growing food in our enormous garden, keeping bees and chickens, and getting all our meat, cheese and milk from neighboring farms.  During that first year, Luca had become fascinated with the origins of so much of what he consumed.  So when I said I didn’t know who made his pasta, he looked exasperated.  “Everything is made by someone mommy,” he said.  Duh.

This basic insight, so clear to three-year-old Luca on his farm, is not so obvious to many of us.  Disconnected from the sometimes simple, sometimes incredibly complex processes that bring food to our table or put shoes on our feet, we can get lulled into thinking that stuff just is. 

I thought then, wouldn’t it be wonderful to somehow share this experience with our less, shall we say, “earthy” friends.   I stared at my sheep, and my sheep stared at me.  Wouldn’t it be great, I thought, if someone made baby booties out of the wool of individual sheep, and paired them with a little book that introduced the sheep and farm they came from?  Huh.

 

I shared this idle thought with my friend, Nora, who surprised me and said, “Let’s do it!”  Turns out, my slightly...uh..."rustic" mountain-top friend Nora lived a fabulous former life making hats for Broadway in pre-bubble New York City.  (You really never know what you’ll find in themthar hills!)

Sooo, over the next few months I taught myself to felt and Nora dusted off her old hat blocks and got to work designing and making patterns for our line of baby booties, hats and other increasingly whimsical accessories.  We plunged ourselves into the arcane yet...arcane world of bookmaking, and started developing a series of tiny books to accompany each of our products. 

It's all been so much fun (well, except for the sheep shelter blowing over in the wind. Twice).  Our kids are in and out of the studio all day "making stuff to sell" and generally causing mayhem. And the studio is becoming a place for people to come and hang out.  Our dastardly plan is coming to fruition!

Our hearts are in the mountains, our heads are in the clouds!

We are a collective of seven sheep and two humans who together grow wool on our hundred-acre Vermont farm.  We make our own felt by hand, and handcraft our hats, booties and other creations using original designs and patterns.   We source everything as close to home as possible, and our goods are created “from the grass up” right on the farm. 

 

But hayseeds we aren’t.  We envision a world where one-year-old boys wear purple fedoras and toddlerettes wear 1920s-inspired beaded cloches.  We’d like to see newborn gentlemen wearing tiny felt wing tips and bowler hats embellished with vintage buttons, and we’d absolutely love to see itty-bitty ladies completing every outfit with a feathered cocktail headband! 

Our vision is not only to create fabulous items of adornment; we are also on a mission to connect children with the origins of their essential possessions.  We believe that knowing where things come from and how they are made enriches a child’s understanding and appreciation of our world.  To this end, we accompany each of our goods with a storybook introducing our farm and the sheep that contributed the wool.  Our sheep have distinct personalities, and we design along thematic “lines” that celebrate them.