Arizona Renaissance Festival

Arizona Renaissance Festival is here! Love, love, love it!

Visit and have fun. Come and submerge yourself in a 16 century market place with a touch of Fairy Land. See one or all shows (maybe, participate in one), see the joisting knights, many of street entertainers and this year you can even see a live mermaid!

Eat, drink and be treated like a Royalty at the Pleasure feast or just get something delicious from the village vendors.

The craftsmanship is really wonderful there. You can buy a nice fantasy costume, a hat, accessories or lovely home decor pieces.

This pot talked to me and I got it to store my fantasies in:

Don't forget your camera, catch the moment! and  hurry, they are open until April 1st only!

What's new at Socksandmittens/ Inspired by Renaissance Fair. Spring 2015

This year we've got lots of new pretty yarns in alpaca, wool, cashmere and cotton. Some of yarns are even hand spun and hand dyed! Many of these we bought in small quantities so this coming season for us will be filled with OOAK items. The yarns are gorgeous and every one of these has a different feel. Every pair of gloves we made from these we are trying to bring the best qualities of yarn.

For example, this pair was knit from the yarn I bought during Renaissance Festival here in Phoenix:

The wool came from the lovely alpaca farm in Tuscon, AZ area. It was hand spuned there and later dyed with alkanet root. The dye gave it such a pretty lavender grey color! I also love that the yarn has un even thickness so the gloves we made have a very pretty texture.

We had chance to see how these yarns are made so it was so inspiring. I am almost ready to experiment with natural dyes myself!

The medieval festival gave us another idea, too. Historically, the clothing people wore were mostly made with single colors you can find in nature and the simple patterns were used. So we create a couple of new patterns for men's fingerless gloves for our shop. This pair has a longer ribbed cuff:

This pair seems to be simple but it has some different finishing touches:

Despite the simple look, they are not easy to make but I am really happy with how the gloves turned out. They are made in modern time for modern people but they still have this wonderful rustic feel in them!

The other yarns we got are also gorgeous and we are happily working on our new projects. We will probably list the warmer items at the end of summer but please visit our socksandmittens shop any time to see if there is anything you like to order or purchase a ready made item. 

New at agardencottage, photo note cards

There is something new in our vintage shop, photo notecards! The image used for these cards are one of my favorites from my flower series photography. These particular cards are featuring gorgeous purple bells flowers in a white flower pot with a sign Flowers on it.

These cards are elegant looking and have a slightly rustic touch thanks to the brown envelope. They are professionally printed on chlorine free high quality cardstock in a matte finish.

So if you are looking for some universal photo note cards please stop by our agardencottage shop and see if these are for you! Browse around and look what else we have!

The Rose Sampling by Little House Needlework

My recent cross stitch is finished, the "Rose sampling" by Little House Needlework. It was easy to stitch and I had a great time doing it. I did not frame it yet but I am looking forward to doing this.

I am a big fan of LHN designs. They give me that cozy feeling of home in a rustic cottage. When framed, they looks great on the wall.

 So I am always waiting for the new ones to come out.

In a mood for rustic

You can tell, I am in a mood for rustic this year.I am picking natural colors for our knit items, decorating our house with vintage clay pottery and browsing through hundreds of rustic style pictures on Pinterest for inspiration.

I am in a mood for simple but sophisticated in it's simplicity.

So  we made several items this Fall which were inspired by the yarn itself. 

 We knit some socks, some gloves and mittens and I am still trying to make some Christmas stockings but it seems that there is not enough time. We are already working on some custom orders.

Fall is the most enjoyable time of year for me. Our garden is coming back to life after the hot summer and we are harvesting a generous amount of Armenian cucumbers. 

 We planted them in curiosity last spring and we are really enjoining this great produce. I am trying to can them but it seems that they are producing faster then we can pickle them :)

Some new birds appeared in our garden. They are blue and gray and seems to be interested in the sweet water from our hummingbird feeder. Another day they went through my dried fruits and collection of natural things we have picked up, and left them in a mess all over the patio. It's pretty interesting to see how wildlife is getting comfortable around people. 

 The only thing we are missing here right now is some colorful leaves. A day long trip up north might be a great idea to contribute to the Autumn mood.

But for now I am just making some yellow & brown leaves from paper to add some autumn charm to our Fall decor.

Our men's fingerless gloves were on front page of Etsy today!

What a pleasant surprise we had this morning! Our gloves were featured on front page of Etsy and were sold to a great buyer from Sweden!



I am already packing them and they will be on it's way to Europe in an hour.

A great collection Testosterone which was featured on FP was made by Irene Tombjorndesigns , and she is from Sweden, too! Thank you so much, Irene!