A while back I promised someone (I cannot for the life of me remember who) that I would post a few pictures of my extensive crewel collection. By extensive I mean close to 350+ pieces (I had to count them to see where I really was and yeah...I have that many).
It all started with my grandma (a.k.a. Nanny). She had purchased a few things for my cousin Maria (who was having a baby - 16+ years ago at this point). My grandma had gone to the thrift store to get some decorations for the baby's room. My cousin and her husband drove in for a visit. I happened to be visiting at the same time and had seen some of the decorations my grandma had gotten. There were two black painted velvet pieces (not kidding) and this unbelievable tree of life crewel piece. You can see it in the pic above (it's the one with the green frame - oh yeah and it looks like a tree...hehe). Fortunately for me, my cousin could not squeeze another thing into her car so the crewel piece was left (strangely enough they also left the painted velvet pieces too...I mean I would have snatched those bad boys up ya know?!)...
I was in love with that tree of life piece. I can honestly say that I gasped when I saw it for the first time. I pretty much hovered around it the entire weekend. The second their car was out of sight I ran back into the house to see if they had left it. As fate would have it, they had (I still get a little excited inside thinking about the moment I discovered it had been left behind). My grandma followed me back there and I asked her if I could have it. She just laughed and said yes of course! I then proceeded to tell her how much I loved it. She thought that was pretty funny so the next day we took a trip to the thrift store... where I proceeded to load up with a few more pieces. From that day forward, any time I would go to visit my grandma she would have a piece or two waiting for me. She was cool like that.
In the beginning (this was before the birth of the Internet) I got all of my pieces from thrift stores. I searched high and low and usually came away with a piece or two. Some were pretty amazing and some were not so amazing.
At that time I bought anything I could lay my hands on. I bought animals, florals (loads of florals), food, houses, and all sorts of oddities (I got a crewel pic of a coffee grinder once). You named it - they pretty much had it made into a crewel kit.
One of the times I went to see my grandma she asked me if I wanted to learn how to do crewel myself (there were more kits in the thrift stores than completed pieces so this just made sense - I could do my OWN). I jumped at the chance! During that visit she had bought me a few small crewel kits to practice with. There was a butterfly, a flower and a ladybug. Well I must have been in the anti-crafting zone cause I basically took them all out. Those poor fellas never stood a chance. The flower was the only thing that even remotely looked like a flower and even that was questionable (I tried to tell my grandma that I was going for an abstract /modern art look - but she wasn't buying it). She was sharp like that too.
So LollyChops can do lots of nifty things.. but crewel is definitely NOT one of them. I decided to serve my crewel community as an avid collector - so back to the thrift stores I went.
Around that time I had exhausted my thrift store finds and was was seriously hankering more crewel - ebay came into being (do you hear that sound..??? That's the sound of the crewel angels singing). ummmm HELLO...you can buy crewel ON-LINE! Not just any crewel either. We are talking about never-before-seen-totally-knock-your-crewel-stitches-out-of-alignment type pieces. Dudes. That was the birth of a whole new kind of collecting.
I had alerts set up with every kind of search term and crewel mis-spelling and mis-understanding that I could think of... you see... lots of people don't know what crewel is... they call it all sorts of weird names and spell it all sorts of funny. I had them ALL down.
The pieces started rolling in at this point and I started to unload some of the more unsavory pieces (sadly the crewel coffee grinder has gone to that place that crewel coffee grinders go - back to the thrift store for some other coffee grinder or crewel crazed fiend to find). Don't worry about him though.. he had crewel spatula to keep him company. I am sure they are happier now than they were with me.
I have settled down with my collecting now. I can pretty much cover every square inch of wall space in the house with crewel if I wanted to - well actually let me clarify. I want to.. but Mr. MuttonChops oh um I mean RonChops is not as into crewel as I am. Can you believe that... and I married him anyway?
My craft room is pretty much covered in crewel as you can see HERE. The kitchen will soon be covered as soon as we get rid of our hideous blue wall paper (hopefully this winter)...I might want to retract that last comment or RonChops might not be into getting started on that little project if he knows the Wall-of-Crewel is to follow... shhhh I won't tell if you guys won't ok!
I tried to get good pics of some of my pieces but it was late in the day when I had the crewel idea to do this post (insert sound of a ratta tat tat drum kit here). I'll have to post a pic of my totally amazing crewel corn at some point (he's tucked away with my crewel spice set and the crewel flower and fruit stand and oh yeah...the crewel cornucopia of fruit too). They are all anxiously awaiting the day that the blue wall paper goes to that place that blue wall paper goes when the 70's are over. The trash.
Happy Monday everyone!
P.S. It's not to late to enter the Bacon Free Giveaway. Also..let me know if you want to host a recipe here! I still have slots open!
P.S.S. This coming Sunday (11/02/08) I am going to have a Squash-Off! Robyn and I are going to pit our squash recipes head-to-head! We have a pot luck at work on Friday so there will be real live voting and pics and everything! I am TOTALLY excited about it!
