eBay Holiday

Some new items have been listed on eBay for your holiday enjoyment - quilt and wool felt applique patterns, a wool felt kit and needlepunch tag kit. More patterns, books and other special items will be added throughout the month. I hope you'll visit my eBay auctions - my seller name is "simplefolkwlt". Thanks for looking!

A busy weekend of Christmas shopping and craft show hopping is ahead! I hope your holiday plans are coming along. We've got the first big snowstorm of the year headed our way on Monday, so we'll be braced for that. It had to happen sooner or later!

Enjoy your weekend and Happy December!

Walnut Hill Christmas

If you're up here in Maine you'll want to make a special trip to North Yarmouth this Saturday for the annual "A Walnut Hill Christmas" Holiday Gift Show which features 30 talented area craftspeople offering some wonderful items to make your holidays merry! You'll find everything from country and Victorian decorations, folk art, hooked pieces (courtesy of my friend Kim Dubay of Primitive Pastimes), hand-loomed Christmas stockings, pottery, quilts and so much more. This will be my first year attending so I'll report on how it was next week!

The wonderful Santa graphic I used for this picture is an example of the chalkware Santas made by Vaillancourt Folk Art in Sutton, Mass. where I used to live. It is called "Walnut Santa" and I thought it was appropriate for the show's graphic, although you won't find any of these available at the gift show. Just wanted to get that disclaimer out there!

As I mentioned in my previous post, my brother Scott Thomas was supposed to do a book signing for his new book Midnight in New England at LL Bean this Saturday as well. However, due to illness he won't be able to do the signing. Hopefully it can be rescheduled. His book is available through all the major online book stores and many of the large chain book stores as well.

Another awesome Open House this weekend will be further south in Amherst, Virginia at Notforgotten Farm! She'll have a lot of goodies to offer as well - check out her blog here: StitchesinTyme for all the details and cool pictures of the shop all decked out for Christmas!

Just a quick note for tonight, my head cold has settled comfortably in my sinuses and I'm about to ingest some drugs and hit the sack! Whatever you do this first weekend in December, I hope you have fun! Take good care,

Coastal Blog

Warm greetings from the coast of Maine! This is my first attempt at a post to debut my new blog. Hopefully I'll have something interesting for you to read as time goes on! The picture above is from a vintage postcard and is an artist's rendering of Portland Head Light, a very famous and much-photographed and painted lighthouse about 20 minutes from where we currently live on the southern coast of Maine.

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! My son Russell was able to make his way up to spend a few days with us via the Downeaster, an Amtrak train that runs between Portland and Boston. Now that my husband and I have moved to Maine we see him even less than before, which wasn't much to begin with, so this Thanksgiving was a real treat for Mom!

Now that the first big holiday of the year has come and gone our attentions turn quickly to the Christmas holiday season, and suddenly the gift list is looming large and I'm hoping I can get everything done in time! One of my talented author brothers, Scott Thomas is coming down from further up in Maine this Saturday for a book signing at LL Bean's big flagship store in Freeport for his newly-released book of short stories, Midnight in New England. Scott's writing is elegant and subtle in the way he gently lures you into his tales, fictional ghost stories set in colonial New England. If you're planning a shopping trip to Freeport on December 1 do try to find his table, and I'll be there with him as well. His time slot is from 4-7pm. Bean's is a magical place this time of year with all the trees aflame with lights, indeed the whole of Freeport Village glows with red, white and green globes of lights strung throughout the streets for a very festive feeling. All we'll need is a little snow!

On the subject of shopping, Thanksgiving night I sent out an email to my mailing list detailing some wonderful new patterns and books that would make great gifts for Christmas. Also, shipping is free on all U.S. orders through the holiday, so hopefully that will help what with the price of gas being so high. Stay home from the malls and shop online!   If you're an eBay buyer I will have more items posted there soon, and I need to spend some time this week putting a lot of things on sale to help you stay within that holiday budget.   This looks like a big enough post for my first time so I'll close for tonight!

Thank you for reading, and take care all!