All Your Beautiful Faces

Hello Everyone, I have missed you. As you may know, I took the radical step of deleting my social media accounts. Was it a month ago…two months ago? At first it felt very awkward. With twitching fingers, I kept picking up my phone, trying to find an app to open. There are only so many times you can check your email. It took about a week, but my fingers did eventually stop twitching and I even found myself forgetting to carry my phone from one room to the next.

I have gone back to listening to podcasts, audio books and the radio. Slowly, slowly, I am recovering my attention span. Knitting is still a major work distraction, but I’m not giving up my knitting needles. In fact, let it be known that I would like to be buried with knitting needles in my hands. I also won’t report that without social media I am all calm, cool and collected. I wasn’t calm, cool, and collected before social media was invented, so it wouldn’t stand to reason that I would be now. But I am happier and I am enjoying existing in only one reality.

With the absence of social media, I have finally found the time and the will to work on my website. I can’t tell you how many years I have been thinking about creating a page of customer photos. Well, I did it! I finally did it! You can find this page by clicking on “Collections” and then scrolling to “Hat Junkies” . Or just click HERE. It makes me so happy to look at all your beautiful faces. Over the years I have connected with so many women and even a few men who have purchased hats from me. I have been tipped with many a hug, both physical and virtual. Meeting my customers is the best part of my work. If you don’t find your face on this page please email me a photo. I promise to include you.

I have been very busy in the hat studio filling a Spring order for Beauchapeau Hat Shop in Niagara on the Lake, Ontario. One of these days I will get to this beautiful store in person.

I have also been playing with my antique straw braid sewing machine. You can see one of my latest creations on Mandy in the top photo. Mandy actually bought a different hat, but I was quite impressed with how beautiful she looked in this hat. I also made this pretty one…

I ordered a couple of yards of the striped organic cotton and hemp fabric, which makes up the band, just to see if I liked it. I do! There will be more. this particular hat is a large size (23.5 or 24″”) So, if she is calling to you and the hat fits, let me know.

And then, of course, there is my knitting. One of the things I do while hand sewing flowers is watch knitting videos. I am a huge fan of Bluprint (formerly Craftsy) It’s a paid subscription, but so worth it. It is full of online courses in knitting, crochet, sewing, cooking, calligraphy. Basically, anything that matters. Well, I was watching this course in shawl design and I learned that you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to design a shawl. Shawls are basically a template and then you fill in the template with the stitches that you want. I seriously thought that you needed to have an advanced Mathematics degree to understand pattern design. But this truly mathematically challenged human has designed a shawl. Here it is! Wrinkles and all…

In other news, I am very temporarily leaving this beautiful place…

And heading to Toronto to visit my family. I had to make myself a new “city hat”.

I explained to Tony that I needed to make a new hat because I wanted to look like a tough city chick while in Toronto. I didn’t want to look like a country girl frolicking through the daisies. He laughed and assured me that I still look like a country girl frolicking through the daisies. Oh well, I should probably just own it.

It’s been a pleasure chatting with you. I love your comments, so send them along. Love, Anna