Off to London and Ireland...

bye bye big flowers, enjoy your new life! have a nice flight!!!!

you can collect them...!

Like beautiful Opal from London...

Busy, but had time for breakfast

This week I've been dying wool, and felting wool, and making flowers and making flowers and making flowers. I restocked Peachy Green in time for artwalk, am preparing a big package for my photographer friend in Ireland, and working on a proposal to a new shop.
Lots of neat things going on...managed to fit in breakfast this week at Wish You Were Here....ahhh....

New Wensleydale Brooches at Peachy Green...

due to my Wensleydale flower brooches selling out last week on First Friday, I have delivered new ones to the shop this morning. check them out- they are bigger and plumper than ever! and perfect for your lapel.
XO

Apple and Pumpkin picking...

Max and I played cowboys on the range today at the preschool field trip to the apple orchard and pumpkin patch...quite a lovely and long hayride on a beautiful fall day.

Lovely day

it was a lovely day, I took some pretty pics in downtown Lancaster...Joy is finishing my website and the plans called for more photos...
took these neat ones...the doorway of Peachy Green for my stockist tab, and surprise...my little flower headbands made from Wensleydale wool are in the window.
Lancaster is really beautiful downtown...I kept wanting to take photos of peoples porches and windows...you could see paintings inside the houses, lit by little lamps...things like that...
so take my word for it...if you get to Lancaster downtown...walk around, these little city houses would be millions in other cities...and all the people that live in those houses get to walk to Central Market for their veggies, and have their snacks in cafes...and this is only 1.5 miles from my house?
i'm a lucky girl.

drop off at HATCH Studio and Gallery

thank YOU Bethany and your lovely lovely studio....here's my cubby there as of Friday...check out the table arrangement ready for "Ladies Night"...it would take me two months to come up with that! I'm sure it took Bethany about 10 minutes:)

What a fabulous place she has with great classes, great gifts, in a cool cool setting...

Peachy Green 56 North Prince Lancaster....new Stockist, just in time for October First Friday

Visit downtown Lancaster's organic clothing retailer in their new location. Thank you Rachelle, for bringing me into the shop, right before First Friday October. Lancaster is so busy on First Friday's now, it's like a BIG party downtown...truly fantastic.
Check out the lovely assortment of green clothing, kids clothes, and fair trade accessories and products. Also, pick up this awesome new shopping bag designed by FIG magazine for ONLY $5!!!!.
After your shopping, don't forget to pop into Peachy Green's cool green neighbor, "The Green Man Cafe" for some First Friday food that will make you feel good.
I have a nice assortment of wooly accessories- at Peachy Green, all made with wool from Yorkshire, England- mostly from Wensleydale sheep. Enjoy:-) and Happy autumn!

XO
Mags

Drop Off Day at the Lancaster Yarn Shop

so busy at the Lancaster Yarn Shop today, with tourists from all over. The air was brisk, and a storm was on it's way...so there was a neat autumn vibe in the air.

I dropped off my new autumn and early winter line up of British wool hair things, under my newly designed label, "Maggie French Accessories." (subsequently changing out my display there.)

i absolutely love using the wool from the North Yorkshire Dales exclusively. The end result is very elegant. The delicate quality of the Wensleydale wool felted, is really unique and special.

here's some photos from the day...

Garage inspiration

"Entente Cordiale"
Designed by Patricia Thirion and Janet Honour

i've been painting the exterior of my garage...white with a bright blue side door. My color inspiration: this garden cottage "Entente Cordiale" at the Royal Horticulture Society Chelsea Flower Show this year.

This year I'm painting, next year I'll add more plantings. Thank goodness for having a picture I like to work from. I'll definately be at Landis Valley's garden show next spring looking for red, purple and white flowers to plant.

so far, the new colors are making my garden look brighter and more alive...and I used our garden tomatoes in tonight's dinner:-)

i like shutterfly...

I discovered this week that i could use Shutterfly to create some of the marketing pieces I need. I created this today, and it's what i'll send with my samples.
I'm still in love with these photos by Lon Farenwald. Katie and Maggie, my models made my accessories come to life.

www.maggiefench.net

Thank you so much to Joy Baudart, my cousin in Vancouver for working hard to create a website for me. We're off the ground tonight with my first home page...look for updates in the weeks to come, complete with more Autumn 2009 images, stockists information, and information on upcoming books my work will be in.


Joy did a wonderful job helping me streamline my ideas. She made everything better than I had imagined, and I am so grateful to have a new logo and web presence. I think we've probably sent each other a million emails over the last couple of months. She really listened to what I had to say, and made my dreams come true. Wouldn't my Grandma be proud of this collaboration between the two of us? Our photos sat near one another on her bookshelf for as long as I can remember.
I highly recommend Joy!

Preschool, Paris, and Labels

What a busy busy week- with Max's fabulous preschool starting, my new part-time job is in full-force, (requiring me to manage my time- yikes!) and great mail is dropping into my mailbox...including fantastic invites, great reads, and my newly designed labels by Joy Baudart of www.c2itdesign.com, sent all the way from Paris.
XX

My shelf at HATCH Studio & Gallery

Thank you Bethany! you're the best with the most wonderful place around!
look for my hair accessories here soon:-)

HATCH Studio & Gallery
620 Paxton Place, Suite 101
Lititz, PA 17543
in Kissel Hill Commons
717-823-8100
www.hatchstudioandgallery.com

Libia in Colombia looking BEAUTIFUL in her barrette...

My barrettes are living everywhere! Libia is lovely wearing this...
with her Mom back home in Colombia...she was one of the au pairs in my group this past year.:-) LOOK how it matches the flowers!!!! it's beautiful there.

underneath it, i stitched, "it felt like home." and she opened it before she left America.

XO

Autumn Line and photo shoot!

I've had a wonderful dreamy week creating my autumn line, and having a photo shoot!
Thank goodness for friends and my husbands best friend, Lon for taking the photos for me, and for Maggie and Katie for modeling for me.

My cousin Joy is working on my website, coming soon, "www.maggiefrench.net" and so I felt an urgent need to get some photos done, so that she had something to work with. I am growing up, at 36! and am seeking calmness, and loveliness in my art. It's been wonderful to have found North Yorkshire wool and to be able to see what I could do with it.

The photo shoot allowed me to make my ideas more concrete. I went to sleep last night dreaming of a Christmas/Winter line. and spent today working on my autumn line inventory.

All Naturale....

I've had a creative obsession the last month - rare British wool! Did you know that Wensleydale sheep are endangered?

I had wondered what I could make with this wool, even dreamed about it, and after a few emails and phone calls I found a supplier only 1.32 miles from me! Jeri from Flying Fibers...just got back from North Yorkshire last week. I had the loveliest evening with her, and she taught me about the fibers she brought back. Jeri is the Art Dept Chair at Millersville University. It was delight to chat with her and her Brit husband Matthew- who I knew from Building Character.

this piece was posted off to a special place Friday night. The base is Black Shetland wool, the flower bases are Brown Shetland, and the delicate white filigree looking felt is White Wensleydale. I have never felt anything so lovely as that...

this one is so simple, the fibers themselves are just extraordinary and they all felted like a dream.

I am making a second one - have all of the 8 individual pieces felted already, but now I'm on a search for mother of pearl buttons, from England.

As the recession continues, it is lovely to be creating things with the absolute finest materials- it feels like these are things that would be saved, and worn, and cherished, and worn again. To work with Wensleydale wool in particular- it feels like a special moment in time, as it is a fiber unlike any other, with a very very limited supply available. Although it's summer I can't help think that in autumn and winter this type of piece could be worn all the time with lovely sweaters, and because it's so special, it would make your day special too.

First Friday Lancaster July 2009

Rachel-Marie was the featured artist at the Lancaster Yarn Shop on Friday night. Max had so much fun dancing to the folk band...it was a very busy First Friday and I was so happy for RM:-) My brother Mark was in town from Boston to celebrate my Dad's 70th birthday!, so we all had fun hitting the town and checking out the great shops.

Rachel-Marie has been SO helpful to me! Last week, she helped me re-photograph my shop!!! and even modeled for me! check out my new and improved Etsy store: www.maggiefrenchfolkart.etsy.com.

got into another book...

Garth of ExtremeCraft.com was so nice and emailed me (back) today saying he selected two of my three submissions for the book.

I'm excited about this...the concept of this one is just soooo cool. My resourceful scavenger Godfather Uncle Peter would be proud of me.

(due out this November 2009)...check Borders...that's where I've found Quarry books before.


in other news...
I had the most fantastic dream last night. We were in Paris at the most magical department store (please note I've been to the mall 3x since Christmas).- sweeping red carpeted gilded stairs (i'm the only one on the stairs), staff is all wearing Chanel...dresses displayed with coordinating hats in deep rows. i keep climbing stairs, everything is burgundy red and gold.
We get to the top, and enter a fancy private room with a cat. A fancy-dressed younger man lets us in. Big Paris windows with drapes. He presses a button on the wall and down down down the room goes! suddenly the ceiling is holding onto the room with gold cables. When the room lands, we are in a child's dream playroom and Max is enthralled.
I head out onto the street and pass Scarlet Johansson (black skinny jeans, white shirt, over sized neutral drapey coat thing, sunglasses, great bag). I head into a little cafe and make a phone call- then back to the store.

Flower Brooches...

these are pretty on tight plain Gap-like t-shirts:-)
see the neat trims? pink lace ribbon and white ribbon?

so...me and Max did a freecycle run last Sunday to the most beautiful farm right outside of Millersville (for Christmas things)...sweeping views all around, old red farmhouse (sighhh....) dirt driveway....rolling hills, long front yard, a nice breeze, a vegetable garden across from the front door. I met a wonderful woman who said we're welcome to come back and visit and she says, "don't know if you do crafts, but you can look through these boxes of craft things...." (magic words)...I took a few things, including these vintage trims...they were on the neatest cardstock with Victorian printed writing.

check my Etsy shop for them.