A New Retailer and Mimi goes to her first hotel...

On this blustery, frigid day, Mimi and I ventured downtown with a batch of felty flower destined for: The gorgeous Lancaster Marriott at Penn Square.

We brought with us a lovely little batch of British Wensleydale accessories that will be sold at the Mandarin Rose Spa on the fifth floor.

It was exciting to bring my things up to the spa. As we got off the elevator this stone goddess greeted us..

So...after our appointment at the spa upstairs, we took the elevator down to the grand lobby and checked out the hotel's splendid Christmas decorations with Mimi cozy and snuggled up in the stroller...


A December morning in the city with Momma...


Mimi's first hotel adventure and a neat place to be.

Grateful

This past month I've realized how grateful I am for the sense of community I have in Lancaster. Mimi has made me realize that we have become part of the fabric of our community- over the weeks, months and years, through art events, and the cooperative school, jobs, and everything else!

As people brought us meals, and gave us baby clothes, and added me as friends on their facebook pages...I've realized that so many of the people in my artist circle, are also friends with my friends at the cooperative school, and those friends are friends of my neighbor friends, and so on. One day we went to school, and Mimi was wearing a baby cardi of Natalie's (now age 5) and Natalie's brother (age 6 months) was in turn wearing a favorite shirt from Max. At Eastern Market this year again, so many faces I recognized stopped by my booth to chat with me. Mimi was introduced to local artist Mimi Shapiro, who said her name is a happy one, and everyone smiled at Mimi, peeking into the stroller at my sleepy new addition.
At the show, I looked to my left, and there were the folk art chairs i painted with the neighborhood kids a few years ago on two hot artist Saturdays in the summertime. I had completely forgotten about all the visitors to market that signed a tomato...or the kids who went to town with paint on the Let's Meet at Eastern Market chair. Lancaster has been a neat place for us to be during the last few years. and I'm so fortunate to be able to give Mimi that calm, comfortable sense of real community. and in an artistic city too!

Gnome shoes!

from my friends at Peace Street, Australia. these are killer....!

loving it...

The Yarn Skein Ornament from Anthropologie.


and this lovely felty wrapping idea.

Happy Week

Mimi has started to shoot us the most wonderful grins, with her eyes beaming too:-) She weighed 9.5 lbs today at a check-up.

My favorite booth at Holiday City Arts Market...Mom and daughter, Sherry and Hollie Chantiles. Sherry makes these...


and Hollie is an illustrator and makes these sweet little pins...(check out the amazing card behind the mossy rocks..-had to buy a couple of those. I want to mail them, but also want to frame them...)
(Mimi is getting the light blue heart for Christmas in her stocking:-) ) they are sized so perfectly for a little one to wear.

On the home front, i've been cleaning and organizing as I get ready for Christmas.
I found an IKEA book shelf, unopened, un-built in our guestroom closet (thanks honey!). built it for Max, then scrounged the house and emptied out all the little bookshelves, and put all his books into this one. so happy with that. his books look great and he's reading more..but the bookshelf has made his room smell like the IKEA store and now I want to make cinnamon rolls!

Holiday City Arts Market 2010

Holiday City Arts Market 2010 was great this year. I love the returning customers and the new ones who through my flowers have discovered Wensleydale wool.
Yorkshire Wensleydale flowers are now appearing on little girls and on Mom's winter coat, and on hats, etc all over Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Mimi came along with me, I bundled her up so much she slept all day- only waking a few times to nurse and look around.
I'm busy now at home working on special orders and getting the house ready for Christmas- and thinking about my plans for 2011. It was fantastic to end the year on a positive note, and with little Mimi is tow!

Flowers flowers everywhere...

for real...as i get all set up for my one day only appearance at City Arts Market, Lancaster (King Street) this Saturday December 4. I have flowers on my table, in my sewing basket, in my other sewing basket, on my felt drying rack, and all over my show table as I get ready. even my Christian Lacroix Evian bottles are getting packed up for the big day. the coolest, most Indie craft show in Lancaster.
Stop by from 10-4 and get your holiday shopping on.

prepping for City Arts Market, December 4, Eastern Market, Lancaster

normally this isn't a huge deal regarding preparation...it's such a lovely, comfy, Indie, community show...but it's a little harder for me this year to get ready, because I'm juggling little Mimi and her ravenous feeding schedule, and Max's demanding need for lots of snacks and toy finding activities.

but when I've gotten a moment (naps and preschool, etc) this is what my kitchen cooks up. little piles of Wensleydale wool...ready for felting. i got a litle more hardcore this year, felting this many pieces at one time. this grouping will make six flowers for three layer hair clips or small pins.





and when everything is cleaned up, then we can talk about dinner:-)

My Anthropologie home wish list Winter 2010

Mayhem...!

I'm always moaning about cleaning up toys, so here's a couple of pics of what happens when Max gets going...rescue me!

and even crazier is when his co-operative school pals come over...everything gets unloaded...but what fun they all have. I leave them alone and hear them talking like big kids as they play.

but here's my sanity...my little studio space in the kitchen. where I do all my felting work. i just tidied that all up- it's helped me keep it together enough to get ready for City Arts Market on December 4.

The City of Lancaster - A City Authentic

A winter WONDERland: Holiday pieces at My Aunt Debbie

Between shows I created a new stash for the My Aunt Debbie Shop (310 North Queen Street Lancaster, PA). Debbie got a little squeeze in this morning during my felty flower delivery...and Mimi wore my vintage baby sweater for the visit, knitted by my Grandma.


(Necklace above by Debbie Serdy of www.myauntdebbie.com)

Debbie's shop features work by herself, local Lancaster artists, and others...here's what else caught my eye today...

Christmas shopping?

My British Wensleydale floral accessories can be found at the The My Aunt Debbie Shop, located here... 310 North Queen Street, in Lancaster, PA.

Lots more showing up there within the next few days. if you are having a crepe at Rachel's across the street, or just strolling down this fantastic section of Queen Street in Lancaster, stop on in. This is a terrific shop, and is always packed to the gills on First Friday!

and so it goes...

So my wintery/holiday show season is now, and my baby is little...like not yet four weeks of littleness! I've been fitting in my art, amongst caring for my newborn...the house is tended to sporadically during Mimi's naps, and each day before things are tidied, the house explodes with Max's toys. sometimes it's a balancing act. literally, as I try navigate my steps over an impressive collection of Toy Story toys...

I picked up my remaining items at the Distelfink Christmas show today...Mimi asleep in the car with my Mom...Mimi wearing the fanciest little pink frock from Sweet Baby Jess, with rosebuds. Max, big boy, running into the venue with me and having to pee the moment I needed to go over my remaining inventory with the volunteers. Then, lingering happily next to me after a worker gave him a Tootsie Pop.

After four years of selling my art, I still never know what will happen with a given show. Always, I meet someone nice, and always my experience builds. but did my things sell this weekend? If they didn't I would feel a bit like an arse, lugging my newborn from Lancaster to Schaefferstown and back...but then again, I love what I make. I love using British wool to make my flowers, I love that i made up my own Wensleydale flower felting techniques. and so it goes...and so Mimi and Max... and my Mom and me...buckling kids in the car, not knowing how the show panned out. Driving for a bit, wondering if people liked them, did they like the little beads? the colors?

So Max and I thanked the volunteer and we emerged from the Thomas Brendle museum, ...my three clear containers of flowers now reduced to half a single box full.

We prepaid our fee for 2011 before we left. An encouraging and reassuring moment- . and so it went. I buckled Max back in the car. My Mom gave me a smile, and I gave my new baby girl a little kiss.

If you bought one of my pieces this weekend, thank you!

New Days and New Ways

so we've welcomed November with a new family member, Mimi...who is as pretty as picture. At 13 days old, she's sleeping well and gaining extra well. Here she is in her tiny Newborn size cardigan;-)

I've hardly left the house..I roam around my cottage holding her, checking on her, and using my remaining energy to go up and down the stairs to fetch the laundry. Different family members and friends come to visit every few days- including Uncle Joe who drove from Maryland just to hold her and congratulate us.

Max has adjusted well and spent this morning at Goldfinch Farm with his classmates. A chemical free farm- they learned about growing vegetables in preparation for their Stone Soup dinner at the end of the month. (you should see the things cooked up by families from our Cooperative school at this event- it's really gourmet)


I am preparing for the Distelfink Christmas show that takes place next weekend at the Thomas Brendle Museum in historic Schaefferstown. It is a consignment style show, so I simply have to bring my inventory there and pick it up. Mimi is being nursed as I assemble British Wensleydale wool to be felted, and stitch on dozens of beads.

With each task I am learning to do things differently, multi-tasking all the time, and am reminded that when I had Max over five years ago, I wasn't making any art at all. Although I am a bit overwhelmed that I have years of caring for another young one ahead of me, I am delighted that our family is complete.
I'll get the hang of managing two kids and my artistic endeavors- in the meantime, we are still accepting lovely dinners and kind hugs:-)

Bonjour Miss Mimi!

A week ago, we welcomed a baby girl into the world. Mimi Angeline French. Firstly, SHE is a SHE! and we were thinking we probably were having a boy. And secondly, she shows no signs of Down Syndrome...which we were sure "he" had.

We arrived at the hospital last Thursday morning for a planned c-section. My belly had remained rather small til the end... so it felt strange to walk into registration saying I was having a c-section. I thought because of the circumstances about our baby, there would be a stressful energy at the delivery. It was so peaceful in actuality. The doctor (Kara Jones- who had delivered Max) giving me a kiss and hug before we walked down the hall to the operating room...and none of the nurses seeming phased by Down Syndrome at all. Everyone seemed excited just to find out if we were having a boy or a girl.



When they pulled the baby out they held her over the curtain for me to see and the baby was tiny and screaming...they told me it was a girl and I just cried. The nurses and NICU nurse and doctor, said, "Maggie, she shows no signs of Down Syndrome at all." She kept crying...the most girly cry!



The staff was amazing. Allowing me to hold her as they sewed up my tummy, allowing her to go to the recovery room with me, and everyone, and I mean everyone saying how pretty she was, and everyone calling her "peanut." (she was 6 lbs and 19.5 inches tall at delivery)



It is fantastic to have a little girl. We had picked the name "Mimi Angeline" (Angeline after my Godmother)- but didn't think we'd really have the opportunity to use it. She is SO tiny, so lovely, curled up in a little ball, I carry her around the house like a tiny doll. She looks at Max like she can't wait to do kid things with him, and she loves me to whisper sweet things in her ear.

I had hardly any girl clothes, hardly any girl anything...but people have brought us things. Suddenly the house has bits of pink everywhere...and it seems the house is glowing.



Each day I realize what it will mean to have a girl, and it feels like I have the best of both worlds with my little boy and little girl. I am tired, exhausted, and so happy too. and thrilled. beyond belief.

Great French Expectations

With just weeks (2 or 3?!) to spare, we are so excited to announce that we are expecting a new French baby!



Babies arrive when they are meant too, and this year that meant being pregnant nearly the whole time that Matt was out of work. We spent a lot of time together as a family, and have welcomed autumn with Matt's new job.

Being 37, we opted to meet with Maternal Fetal Medicine (REALLY I just wanted to see the 4D ultrasound!). We were rather stunned to learn in May that our baby had several markers for Down Syndrome. heart spot and intestinal spot and the whopper, an absent nasal bone at 13.5 weeks- reported in the Lancet as being a significant marker for Down Syndrome and a nearly diagnostic sign of a chromosomal abnormality.

Needless to say, it was quite alarming, and worrisome too. However, we opted out of going through with a diagnostic amnio- after getting philosophical- and prepared ourselves for some long and hard months of waiting it out. We read lots of books about Down Syndrome, and are so ready and excited to meet our baby who, for the last five months has been carrying an impressive 1 in 2 risk of DS. Since our first son Max was a "typical" infant, we find ourselves preparing for the other 50%, so that we are educated enough to give our baby absolutely the best care whatever the outcome.

As the last few months of the pregnancy have unrolled themselves - through the heat of summer (the hottest summer ever on record), an exhaustive job search (500 people applied for my husbands training class which had openings for only 14), a car that broke down, health issues on my part, and lots of other stresses, our baby has fallen into the 19nth percentile for growth with legs now measuring 2 or 3 weeks behind- yet another sign of this T21 chromosomal abnormality.

As we prepare for the birth of our sweet little love, I hunt for tiny little pants, clean the house, thank God for our house, get together with kind and caring friends, play trains, play doh, co-op together at Max's preschool, sleep, nap, roll myself in and out of the car, eat lots of high protein Chobani yogurt, occasionally have a panic attack, thank God we live 5 minutes from a Level 3 NICU, do kick counts every two hours, and register for things like The Nap Nanny, the crawl ball, the Crib Wedge, tummy time mats, and a swing that really reclines. I've packed my hospital bag with copies of the Down Syndrome New Parents Guide, the tiniest clothes I could find (for boys and girls, since we don't know!!!), a big brother shirt for Max from etsy, an elegant robe for me (thank you Mom!), toys for Max to play with, phone numbers, and soft pillows and an extra blanket.

I will never ever for the REST OF MY LIFE! forget the trials and tribulations of this last year. But now a new life is about to arrive! Someone extra special...right when we need something extra special to warm our hearts. As each day comes to a tired close, and we become nearer and nearer to our planned delivery date- I am reminded of the preciousness that's about to be. When our little world will stand still in absolute awe and amazement once again. Nothing could be more bittersweet.