September | 2012 | Raising Jane Journal

What’s a crankie?

Posted on September 30, 2012 by MaryJane

Crikey! It’s called a crankie. (New to me.) Isn’t that what I usually feel like on Fridays? Looks like the early version of TV to me. Thanks to Sue Truman, who mentioned this Sustainable Seattle video on my Twitter account. This is so cute, and you know I love anything “farm”!

Smallknot

Posted on September 29, 2012 by MaryJane

Do you know that feeling you get when you’re strolling through the farmers’ market in, say, late September, and you spy a piece of fruit that is so fresh, so RIPE, that your mouth instantly waters remembering a taste you haven’t tasted for a year, so you pick it up, inhale its fragrance in a deep breath, close your eyes, and sink your teeth into it?

That’s the sensation I felt when I got wind of Smallknot.

What’s Smallknot??

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FREE Glamping Stickers

Posted on September 29, 2012 by MaryJane

They’re here! Another batch of free bumper stickers for International Glamping Weekend 2013, June 1 and 2. Head on over for details on how to get yours!

ZomBEES

Posted on September 27, 2012 by MaryJane

It’s happened … the zombie apocalypse is upon us. Oh wait, it’s the zombee apocalypse.

Well, it is getting close to Halloween. Wait, this isn’t someone bee-ing funny. I do find it a little bee-musing, but apparently bees are in trouble in yet another new way.

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Miss Wilma

Posted on September 26, 2012 by MaryJane

Don’t miss Miss Wilma’s Christmas Show comin’ right-up-just-around-the-corner in November. Get the low-down here. And if for some reason, you haven’t met or heard of Miss Wilma, below is the feature we ran on her in 2005 in an issue of my magazine. (She’s still sewing for us, claiming she’s burned up several sewing machines:)

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Wish Upon a Tree

Posted on September 25, 2012 by MaryJane

When you wish upon a …

Tree?

It’s not the quintessential target of our secret desires, but, hey, Jiminy Cricket doesn’t know everything!

In the UK, a wish might just as easily be cast upon a tree as a star.

Well, maybe not quite as easily, seeing as how there’s a fair amount of pounding involved.

Take a look:

Photo of Wish tree coins in Cumbria, England, by Rosser1954 / Wikimedia.

Curious coin-studded tree trunks can be found throughout the woodlands of England, Scotland, and Ireland. The trees are ancient, long past the days of leafing. Instead, they seem to sprout generations of hopes and dreams in the form of shillings and sixpence. In her published diaries, Queen Victoria mentioned visiting an oak tree festooned with coins on an island in Scotland, and the tradition must have started long before that because a 14th century florin coin was found lodged in another Scottish “wishing” tree.

Who says money doesn’t grow on trees?

Centuries of passersby tapping coins into tree trunks have …

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photo-of-the-day

Posted on September 24, 2012 by MaryJane

National Sewing Month

Posted on September 24, 2012 by MaryJane

Happy National Sewing Month! National Sewing Month was started in 1982 to ensure “the recognition of the importance of home sewing to our Nation.” If you have any sewing projects you’re working on, send ’em on in and we’ll get them posted!

E-mail your pictures to ace@maryjanesfarm.org.

fences … in Dr. Seuss cadence

Posted on September 23, 2012 by MaryJane

On the way to South Dakota for a glamping meet-up and greet-up with the lovely ladies of Glampers on the Loose, we began to notice a common element alongside the road during our trek.

Fences.

So many fences. Of all shapes, sizes, and shades of brown.

Some were old.

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Emoticons

Posted on September 22, 2012 by MaryJane

So maybe I am a little late on the trend … but these emoticon things are crackin’ me up like yesterday’s egg scramble. A quick way to show computerized emotion, these little push-button faces are the Internet equivalent of gestures, facial expressions, and body language. Surprisingly, these aren’t something new; emoticons (referred to below as typographical art) go back as far as 1881!