Primitive Folk Art by Old World Primitives
Handmade Primitive Dolls and Ornaments
I grew my own organic sweet annie this year to use in crafting my spun cotton and primitive doll creations. Today was harvesting day.
Fresh sweet annie smells so wonderful!
Earlier in the day, a black swallowtail butterfly visited the carrots, dill and parsley in my garden, and laid her eggs in them. Another swallowtail had done the same earlier in the week. I am looking forward to seeing the caterpillars hatch in a few days.
I have been all over the place since my last post… oh gosh, where to start. I’ll start with the embarrassing part first – my husband and I attempted to move for the second time within three years, and our plan flopped once again. We have been trying to move from the suburbs to an older farmhouse in the country… something that I always thought was my dream… to live in a 1700s or 1800s farmhouse decorated like one of the homes I have so often drooled over in Early American Life magazine. But our attempts to move have taught me that this may not be my ultimate dream after all. The country escapes that we found ourselves pursuing were still just a little too “more of the same,” albeit in less developed areas. We don’t have the big bucks required to completely “get away from it all,” and we just couldn’t find anything that was quite enough away.
So now we have a new plan in mind… bear with me here, as this may sound crazy… to save up enough money to REALLY move into the country… or rather, a step closer to the wilderness. We are going to save up, purchase a motor home, sell our current home, and pursue the freedom of living full time on the road, camping at remote, wild and beautiful spots along the way. This is an idea I have been toying with for 6 years now, but I never thought I would be able to make it happen. I felt too entrenched in my current way of life despite how much I wanted to give this a try. But now, if we can save enough to make this plan feasible… there is a new goal in the horizon.
So. I’ve wasted a ton of time this summer house-hunting, packing… and then un-packing (ugh!), but I’ve still managed to get some new dolls and ornaments created, and to do a bunch of gardening and pickling too.
Do you think my tomato plants are happy?? 😀
And now I invite you to meet an extreme primitive doll named Nadine, and a primitive witch make-do named Hexe:
Plus my newest ornaments in spun cotton, spun glass, and chenille:
All of the new creations above can be found in my Old World Primitives Etsy shop.
The canning continues in my backyard garden center… and despite the copious amounts of pickles that my cucumber plants have been producing, my husband has decided that he hath not enough cucumbers for his brine. He has therefore been attending our local farmer’s market each weekend to buy up all of the small cucumbers for sale there so that we can pickle them, too.
Behold the gallon jar.
I would also like to introduce my newest primitive folk art creation – a Halloween frog witch doll, created using a fun Soft in the Head “Frogette” design. She is ready to cast spells and enchant hearts. Available in the Old World Primitives Etsy Shop now.
SOLD, thank you!
And finally, an upcoming vacation notice – I will be on vacation August 8th – 15th. All orders received by 2:00pm EST on Friday, August 7th will ship before my vacation begins. All orders received between August 8th – 15th will ship on Monday, August 17th.
I just added a new set of 3 vintage style chenille Halloween ornaments to the Old World Primitives Etsy shop. Each Halloween ornament is handmade of chenille and hand cut vintage Halloween images printed on card stock.
I also added this new set of Halloween ornaments to the Old World Primitives Etsy shop last week.
And now I have some garden photos to share – what a difference our new raised beds with great quality soil have made this year! We are using organic and/or heirloom seeds and seedlings, and absolutely no pesticides or chemicals. No fertilizer has been used yet, but we’ll add some of the organic compost that we are creating in our backyard Earth Machine composter soon.
My orange bell pepper plants are so happy and healthy this year! I can’t wait for them to get ripe.
Does anyone need any jalapeños?? I didn’t realize these plants were going to be so prolific – in a couple more weeks, we’ll be swimming in them!
This row of red and white onions were planted from seedlings, and they are extremely happy. I made the mistake of planting snow peas right next to them and THEN reading that snow peas don’t like to be next to onions, but they are still steadily producing nonetheless.
These are my onions planted from seed, after thinning, with my herbs behind them – dill, basil, parsley, and cilantro. I went a little too crazy with the cilantro.
Grape tomatoes – I picked and ate a few after I took this shot.
The biggest cluster of tomatoes I have ever grown – 9 and counting!
Help, help – the pickle cucumbers are coming! My husband is a pickle fanatic, so we planted 23 pickle cucumber plants this year. The canning might begin this weekend or early next week.