What’s a crankie?

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

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

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

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

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:)

Wish Upon a Tree

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

National Sewing Month

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

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

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!

Emoticons printed in 1881 in the U.S. magazine Puck. Puck no. 212, p. 65. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Here are the more modern versions of “typographical art.”

Smiley face : )

Smiley face = )

Upturned smile :] …

Smiley face with nose :0)

Smile with sunglasses B )

Double-eyed wink >.<

Big smile! : D

Smile ‘n’ wink ; )

Sticking tongue out : p

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