HIGH BUTTON SHOE
November 15, 2005
....coming to you on the right day, with the release of www.crowsoup.com sometime later today, however, I do believe, I am less together myself than normal, which is not saying a lot in my favor. After avoiding Ronnie for 2 weeks with his cold, and thinking perhaps I haven't caught any germs from him, the postmaster yesterday at the post office was snotting and wheezing, and had I not had serious dollar change coming back, I would have just offered keep the change, rather than having her give me any money back. She had just sneezed, and I think I got germs on dirty money!! Drats! I am feeling the telltale signs of first stage cold. So I am armed with all the deterrents to cold and am determined I will not catch cold. Determined, I say! The day is gloomy at best here. We went to bed last night with huge snow flakes falling straight down, captured in the yard light. Big time drats! Obviously I realize, it will come sooner or later...however, I was hoping for much later. Perhaps the day before Christmas. If you are new to my newsletters you don't know of my dislike of winter. And where do I live? Right smack dab in the middle of winter snows. At this writing, the snow has all melted off, which brings a weak smile to my face. That would be the face with Vicks smeared on it to ward off ANY sinus infection that might be lurking under there.And my un-together-ness more than usual, comes from the upcoming Christmas Gathering at the Farmhouse which starts this Friday. I am pretty much ready, oddly enough ( I usually am not). I cut fresh boughs yesterday, as the weather reports were for that 65 mph winds again today and tomorrow that we experienced on Sunday. A good share of the north here is without power and some won't be restored from Saturday wind to late Wednesday night. Thankfully we haven't lost ours, as that would have seriously wrecked my readiness. We, ourselves are always prepared for power outages..but NOT just before an open house. The front porch needs work at the shop, but there is no sense in doing that with the forecast of the wind again.I did change those 3 walls of the shop about 2 weeks ago. I really love the fireplace mantle in there. And some of the new (old) furniture I brought in. Change is good. Not always what I do best, but still good. The obvious problem with it, is what do you do with all the stuff you took out to make that change. I couldn't just tackle it in my usual method, that being jam it all in the barn, as Ronnie has gotten the two garage stalls cleaned out, and some red alert flag in my brain warned me NOT to mess that up. But it is taken care of. Poorly, but done. I won't even tell you where I put it all.And, just to frustrate myself to the max, I made some new stock last week, and into this week. I planned to have some pictures to show you..but got a little too smart with my digital camera expertise and have experienced a major relapse in my photographic abilities. I have told you countless times of my inability to read a manual. Perhaps if that were the case, I could figure out the flash on either camera better. I spent an hour taking great pictures of the shop this week (with a flash that went off), so Beulah could put them up on the website...got home, put the media chip in the computer and ....nothing. no pictures. I mean NO pictures. And yes, I did have a media chip in. So, I could spend a pot of coffee, my reading spectacles on, and a frustrating undetermined but probably lengthy amount of time, trying to figure out how to work that flash...or wait for Beulah to come. Un-huh. That's what I thought too. Besides it's difficult to keep glasses on your nose, when it is smeared with Vicks!I have cookies to bake yet for the gathering. Mindful to keep my hands clean at all times. Sunday, armed with my ingredients list for a white fudge with cranberries recipe, that was featured in the County Register, I found after several stores, that I cannot find one ingredient. That one, of course, being the main ingredient, the white chocolate. Ronnie, always helpful, had thought that he would taste test one batch first to make sure it was edible for the general public. Well, that ain't going to happen! So, no fudge. Just cookies.I met up with goodest friend & folk artist, Holly Schmidt a couple weeks ago, and we went to the Nashville show and antiqued. I got several new things from her, and will be showing them on the website in the next week or so. They are limited numbers, so if you see something, better grab it.If you are new to Holly's work, she is extreme primitive, and high quality. Like Miss Elspeth (Wendy of www.pineberrylane.com ), Holly's work always makes my soul smile.As I have done for the past couple years, I am also taking some of my personal collections to the shop for sale for this season. I find I have too much (our secret..Ron has told me that for years..)We probably won't have a Christmas tree again this year. Our house is simply too full. As he still won't agree to the dead tree I had envisioned I had room for, that would have fit nicely into a niche in the living room, a tree is probably out. I must tell you however, that the dead tree only had about 6-8 branches, bare of course, and would fit. Not hard to decorate..no needles, one string of lights would do it, a ball here and there maybe. It would have been perfect. There are just some things I cannot get past this man!Anyway... crow soup will be released as I mentioned someday later today. We are athttp://www.crowsoup.com/Market586.php . We have a couple more piekeeps offered, and some rag stuf'd pears. Drawn without pattern, they vary in look. Please check them out.The Christmas Gathering begins Friday at noon. Full details are on the home page of the website. www.highbuttonshoe.net I think we have some of the best stock to offer you we have ever had. Happy Thanksgiving to all of you. In this business, often that is a rushed day, between weekends. We are going down to Beulah's for turkey. My harvest table here, although I worked on it for an hour today, is still piled high with projects I hope you will see on Friday. No pressure, there.Thanks for asking to be a part of the farm!in fond regard,Miss Clotilda