stART at the Station - Worcester, MA art fair

It's that time of year again! Time for the indoor, wintry version of stART on the Street known as stART at the Station (Worcester's Union Station, that is).

As they say on their web site:
A premiere holiday arts event with over 80 artists and crafters, food and more, just in time for all your holiday festivities! Hosted at historical Union Station, Worcester's renovated train station boasting soaring ceilings and marble floors. Click here for their site. Right now, as I write this, there is a minimum of information up about this show, but at some point they will put up artist "thumbnail images" and information about those of us taking part.
I will be there selling my paintings and cards. In fact, it's my last show (until further notice), because as I said in my previous post, I am now concentrating on wholesaling (and some consignment through several wonderful stores that currently carry my work). So if you like Jen Niles Art and you can get to Worcester on December 7th, I hope to see you there!

Heartfelt Designs by Trish - Paxton, MA

I wanted to let you know about my friend Trish and her business, Heartfelt Designs by Trish. She does great work, with lots of heart (no pun intended); her crafts really have a nice spirit to them. Click here for her web site.

In addition to all the great wool crafts on her web site, I have to put in a "plug" for her tiny wool animals. Trish hasn't photographed any of these yet (or should I say we've tried to photo them and our skills are somewhat lacking), but they are the cutest things! These tiny little fuzzy sheep, dogs, and more are tiny enough to fit in your hand and they're light as air, because they are made from something called "wool roving." Be sure to ask Trish about them. I know she takes custom orders...imagine giving someone a gift of a tiny wool version of their pet. To honor pets who have passed away, Trish can add little wings to the animal.

I've been away too long

It has happened again! Life has gotten in the way of blogging. So sorry for my prolonged absence. This is the time of year where buying local and handmade is the most important, so I really feel I've dropped the ball!

Some changes: I have had to pare down my Etsy site, which had gotten quite large, actually. That's because I joined www.WholesaleCrafts.com and I am focusing on selling to retailers now. That's not to say I don't sell to individual humans any more, but it just means I have less time to work on getting my work "out there". Wholesaling makes the most sense at this time of my life. And I've found out that retailers don't much care for competing with artists' Etsy sites for retail business! So I removed (from Etsy) all items that I'm selling wholesale through Wholesale Crafts.com.

Any people who would like to buy Jen Niles Art cards (individual or boxed), can do so by emailing me directly. Shopping this way is still easy, because once your order is totaled up, I can send you a PayPal invoice for the total....you can click and pay the total with credit card, even if you are not a PayPal member. Not bad!

Etsy shop

I now have an Etsy shop! Well actually I started it back in 2006 but closed it because I could not devote sufficient time to maintaining it. It's been reopened (this month) and so far it's looking good. My shop name, should you want to look it up at www.etsy.com is "jennilesart". Or you can click here for the link.

I also made my first Etsy purchase recently and it was very cool! The Etsy shop name is "lulaballou" and she makes the cutest little fabric handbags. Etsy also has a way you can shop locally because they can sort the offerings by location, which is a great way to buy handmade AND shop locally, at the same time.

Urban gardening & Youth employment program

I heard about this local program here in Worcester, Mass., and am mentioning it here because it sounds very worthwhile. I hope you will read on... (this is a condensed version of the writeup I received):

"Pernet Family Health Services is a neighborhood-based home health and
social service agency with a commitment to supporting families to be
physically, socially, psychologically, and spiritually whole. The
agency has been serving the Green Island region of Worcester, MA since
1968. This summer, Pernet received funding to create part-time
summer jobs for underprivileged youth. Pernet has decided to use its
youth employment program to fund the creation of a community garden
and install container flower beds throughout the area's small business
district.

Why Youth Gardening?

Pernet chose to create The Green Island Garden because...

1. The garden will bring healthy, affordable, organic food to the
people of Green Island, helping to eradicate food insecurity and
malnourishment.
2. Community gardens offer space for citizens to socialize and bond
with one another, fostering a stronger and healthier social fabric.
3. Community gardens localize the food industry, reducing both the
price of people's food and the city's carbon footprint created by
imported products.

The Youth Program

Pernet's youth employment program is one piece of a city-wide
initiative to give underprivileged youth access to part-time summer
jobs. Any youth (ages 14-21) that qualifies for free school lunch or,
for those youth not in school, meets other income-based requirements,
is eligible for the program. Various organizations throughout the city
have been given the responsibility of placing youth into employment
situations.

Pernet seeks to involve the Green Island neighborhood in this project
as much as possible. We will be selling low-cost shares in the
community garden to its neighbors, guaranteeing them a portion of the
harvest throughout the summer. We will also be sponsoring community
events. The first such event will be on Saturday, June 21st from
8am-3pm, during which time we will be raising the garden beds while
enjoying live music from Melo-Deego and free food from local
restaurants."

I've edited the writeup because the information provided to me was quite lengthy. But it sounds terrific and that is why I wanted to put in a good word here. For More Information, call Lizzy Fox at (508) 755-1228 or email her at lfox@pernetfamilyhealth.org

Pajama Gardening and Plastic Bags

The rising gas prices have really forced some changes around here. When I have to go out in the car, I do multiple tasks on that one trip rather than waste gas going to that neighborhood more than once.

One thing that causes us to do too much driving is searching around for healthy food that won't put us in the poorhouse in the process. We are not strict health food adherents by any stretch, but we're very wary of pesticides on our fruits and veggie. In foods, we avoid high fructose corn syrup and trans fats, and in meat and dairy, we avoid hormones and antibiotics. That right there could tack a lot of miles onto a shopping trip!

We like Whole Foods for some things, but the drive from Worcester to Framingham is just too taxing on our conscience and our wallet these days, so we rarely make a special trip that way. Living Earth in Worcester....well....that's always been cost-prohibitive but now, with gas at $3.60 or so per gallon, I wonder if staying close and shopping there might be cheaper than driving to Trader Joe's. This is awful.

Anyway, I digress. One day recently, as I mused about how little cash my art was generating these days, and how high the cost of fresh organic vegetables (and the gas to drive and get them) is, the proverbial "light bulb" went off over my head. Instead of leaving the gardening to my already overworked husband, I would do it. Heck, I'm here all day homeschooling the little one anyway....what a great educational opportunity! Honestly, when I saw how many hours my work was taking me away from my family and houseworking and other important jobs, and how little profit I was reaping in return, it really made me see the need for this change. By maximizing the capacity of my yard to grow food, I am "earning" in another way. Rather than bringing in money to buy food, I could be bringing in the food itself. After all, my work on Freecycle allows me to bring in many of the items we need or want (and unload them when we're done)...why not bring in food too?

Of course, I have never gardened and don't know a darn thing about it. Thank goodness for the internet! Anyway, my son (age 5) and I have invented a new ritual called Pajama Gardening. Right after breakfast we charge outside in our sleepwear (usually sweats and a t-shirt anyway) and get right to it. I do the work; he's in charge of running around the house waving his rake. In his mind, that's gardening. LOL!! Anyway he sometimes takes loads of yard waste in his little red wagon to dump out back. It's great fun and great exercise. I used to make the mistake of waiting until we got dressed, but by the time THAT was accomplished (those of you with young kids will get this), the sun was too high in the sky and I was, frankly, too exhausted and demoralized to tackle a weedy and unruly yard which sometimes resembles a rain forest!

Anyway, back to work for me. I just wanted to tell you about Pajama Gardening and this cool thing. A nearby town recently voted down a ban on plastic bags at several of the larger offenders...er....I mean stores. That caused quite a debate, or should I say shouting match, on some of the message boards. Don't get me started on what a bunch of babies I think people are when they freak out over a plastic grocery bag ban. For heavens sakes, we're Americans and should be quite resourceful. Bring a cloth bag! Case closed. Anyway, speaking of alternatives, look at this thing I found while Googling the whole plastic bag issue. It's a reusable tote bag that is MADE from old plastic grocery bags! Check it out:

http://www.marloscrochetcorner.com/Plastic%20Bag%20tote.html

So clever!

To h_ _ _ in a handbasket

Ok, maybe I was just in a bad mood. Maybe I was put off by the price of the gas I burned going to Shaw's in the first place. Or I was secretly mad at myself for thinking I'd actually find organic vegetables there (what was I thinking?). But in any case, the other night I saw the evidence that we are indeed headed to hell in a handbasket.

I picked up a nice red vine tomato and looked at the little label that contains the produce number. You know, the one that helps the cashier know how much to charge (the number which, when it starts in "9" means it's organic, "4" means conventional). Well imagine my horror when the little number of the tomato was there, along with an AD for Disney's movie called Ratatouille!! There it was! Disney * Pixar * Ratatouille. On my TOMATO!

I wrote to Shaw's. I told them that if I see the word "Ratatouille" on my produce it damn well better be part of a recipe.