With a mother who frequents estate sales, we end up with a lot of vintage ephemera - postcards, pamphlets, maps - things meant for an immediate audience and not expected to last the test of time. Little is more entertaining, however, than old magazines. I'm not talking "old" like the '80s and '90s (though those are likely great fun to look at, as well), but those classic, over-sized, grandiose magazines of the mid-century. These publications from the '40s, '50s, and '60s give us a taste of a time long-gone through its ads and articles: ads and articles that are sometimes wholeheartedly poignant, quaintly naive, or laugh-out-loud outdated. They show us the things society cared about (or, at least, what the magazines wanted society to care about) with vibrant colors and over-the-top language. With my growing collection of these magazines, I wanted to showcase some highlights every now and then, beginning with vintage advertisements of products still popular today. Coming across ads for products I may use some 70 years later is such an interesting phenomenon to me: it links us to the past in an oddly tangible way, and I wanted our readers to experience that same feeling. Enjoy! -Betsy
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I've always been a huge advocate for eating locally, but the current global situation has really solidified it for me! Living in RI, there are so many options available to us, so I thought I'd tell you about some of my favorites. First, and my most absolute favorite way to eat local, is my garden. I tend to mix it up a little every year, since most herbs are annuals (though I have a few perennials in there), so my herb garden this year has lemon balm, lemon verbena, basil, cilantro, thyme, oregano, rosemary, lavender, sage, chives, peppermint, and pineapple mint. I stepped up my vegetable garden this year, doubling the amount of vegetables I'm growing. My zucchini plant is producing more than we could possibly hope to eat on our own, and the rest are either just starting to bear fruit, or are later season vegetables. I'm excited to feast on our home grown green beans, tomatoes, broccoli, onions, cucumber, butternut squash, and spaghetti squash! I planted peppers, too, but that seemed to be the plant the wildlife was most attracted to; it kept getting dug up, and eventually I just stopped re-planting it. My second favorite way to get local food is through a farm CSA program. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, and it's such a great way to support your local farm! Our CSA at Casey Farm in Saunderstown is really fantastic. Every farm runs their CSA a little differently, but at Casey, we go to the farm once a week to pick up our share. They post a board with what is included in the share that week, some of which they've harvested and have you weigh out, and some of which you go out into the field and harvest yourself. There are, of course, other great ways to support local farms. I've been strawberry picking three times this summer! And then there's the farmer's market! Rhode Island is full of them, but I go to the Saturday morning Coastal Growers Market, also at Casey Farm (not only is Casey Farm the closest farm to me, but my day job is with Historic New England, the non-profit that owns Casey Farm, so I'm biased). Farmer's markets are an amazing resource for all sorts of things! On any given week, you can get local meat, seafood, eggs, cheese, veggies, and some things you wouldn't think about. I've started buying cold brew concentrate coffee from a local coffee company, CBD oil from a local cannabis farm, and even locally made pickles! And if you can't get to the farmer's market yourself, there's an app you can use instead! It's called What's Good. You choose your area, with options for either pick up or delivery, and then just start shopping your market! When our world first shut down in March, the What's Good app was an unbelievable resource for us! We were so glad to be able to still get our food locally. Local farms are essential. There are so many ways to support them, and we all reap the benefits.
Now more than ever, I'm so glad I live on the coast. I can get to the ocean in minutes, and southern RI is filled with beautiful spots to visit. In my continued effort to use every last scrap of fabric I have, I'm working on making mobiles, and shells seem like just the perfect addition. I tried shell collecting at a couple different beaches, with not much success, then remembered the best place I know to collect shells, Rome Point! Rome Point is the ocean front stretch of land at the John H Chafee Nature Preserve in North Kingstown. It's just over a mile from the road to the ocean, so I put on my sneakers and backpack and set out. The nature preserve itself is a lovely, wooded area, but the payoff is really that ocean front beach. The only downside to shell collecting is that you have to keep your eyes glued to the ground, so you don't get to take in beauty of where you are. But it's worth it for find like this one: And I did, of course, stop every now and then to appreciate where I was. The walk back hot and sweaty, and in a moment of utter defeat, the soles of my sneakers fell off literally mid step But the spoils were totally worth it! I'm excited to get crafting!
Betsy here, taking over the blog this week! I noticed Marissa used a recent blog post to talk about where we found our love for vintage fabrics (thanks, Mom) and how she decided to use those fabrics for bloomers, so I figured I’d talk about how I got into the world of embroidery! While it was Mom who force-fed us all things vintage and antique while growing up, my love for embroidery began with another awesome woman in our lives: our Memère (our grandmother – the term Memère is a remnant of our French-Canadian heritage). By the time Marissa and I came along – the youngest by far of her grandchildren – Memère was already retired and had plenty of time to dote on the kids in her life. We spent a ton of time at her apartment, soaked up her attention, and was showed off by her to the other grandmothers in the building (it was this odd competition of who had the most adorable grandchildren – I totally won, as you can see below). I don’t know how it began but, for whatever reason, one day Memère began to show me knitting. I still have a vivid recollection of her bouquet of needles sitting beside her recliner: her go-to activity when watching bowling on television. Maybe it was my fascination with those needles, my need to copy whatever the grown-ups were doing, or my genuine interest in hands-on crafts, but before long, she had shown me the basics and we were off to the races. Pretty soon, she introduced me to other forms of knitting. The picture below is her walking me through how to use some sort of circular knitting loom and, as you can see, it had my entire focus. I don’t quite remember when embroidery came into the picture – in all honesty, it may have been a combination of Memère and Mom who fed that particular hobby – but I can say with certainty that it was Memère who sparked my initial interest in hands-on textile crafting. Sure, I may use the skill to stitch sass and swears – something a grandparent may not approve of – but if you knew our Memère, you’d agree that she would have thought it hilarious.
It wasn’t until Marissa already had Whimsy and Fluff up and running that I returned to the craft. With her fabric scraps and my love of stabbing things repeatedly with a needle (lol), embroidery soon became a staple in the Whimsy and Fluff product line. 20 years later, I’m still copying our Memère: my own mass of needles sitting beside me, television on in the background, happily stitching away at my latest creation. |
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