Pine Needle Basket

Article that goes with the video: Pine Needle Basket

 

Granny Squares

I recall watching my Grandmother and Great Aunts make these by the dozen as a child.

Also see:
Basic Granny Square Pattern

How to Make a Shaker Cheese Basket

Interesting video:

Youtube How to Make a Shaker Cheese Basket 

Bed

In bed we laugh, in bed we cry;
And born in bed, in bed we die;
The near approach a bed may show
Of human bliss to human woe.
Isaac de Benserade

A poem by William Morris

For the Bed at Kelmscott
by William Morris

The wind's on the wold
And the night is a-cold,
And Thames runs chill
Twixt mead and hill,
But kind and dear
Is the old house here,
And my heart is warm
Midst winter's harm.
Rest then and rest,
And think of the best
Twixt summer and spring
When all birds sing
In the town of the tree,
As ye lie in me
And scarce dare move
Lest earth and its love
Should fade away
Ere the full of the day.

I am old and have seen
Many things that have been,
Both grief and peace,
And wane and increase.
No tale I tell
Of ill or well,
But this I say,
Night treadeth on day,
And for worst and best
Right good is rest.

Pugin: God's Own Architect

Also see: Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin

The Homespun Dress

The Homespun Dress by Carrie Belle Sinclair (Text)

150 years old mechanical city village of denmark

Modern Architecture: "The Principle of Non-Decoration"

Some interesting posts on the Thinking Housewife blog:

"The Principle of Non-Decoration"

Modern design and fashion are characterized by a love of uniformity, monotone colors, and visual barrenness.

And...

The Principle of Non-Decoration at Work

On the ugliness of churches...

‘Terrible is This Place’

The state of ecclesiastical architecture is abysmal and is not likely to become non-abysmal anytime soon. The most beautiful churches in America and Europe were created in places and times where entire communities were united behind a single building project, a collective monument to the sacred...

And Schools...

“Why Are Schools So Ugly?”

Most people probably would say that America’s school buildings resemble prisons with windows – and without the barbed wire - because it would be too expensive to make them otherwise. But, that doesn’t make sense. Some of this ugliness is enormously costly…

Modern houses are soul-crushing to those who live in them...

Modern Architecture and its Crusade Against Intimacy

It is essential traditional architecture be revived both in our sacred structures as well as our homes. Note how the homes the wealthy and powerful today inhabit are barren and cold, empty of life and progeny...

And update 4/8/2011 from Home Living: "The Effect of Architecture on Home Living"

"Quilting on a frame"

"Quilting on a frame"

Kindergarten 1898

Kindergarten 1898

Click on image to get a better view.

Video: "Life in a Victorian Home"

"Life in a Victorian Home"

A good video, it does not have the silliness and Victorian bashing one often finds. But by the 1890 electric lights, electric fans, modern bathrooms, and central heat were available so in the late Victorian period people would more often have had running water, water closets, central heat, closets, and other modern house fittings, but many people lived without many of these thing far more recently than many people realize. I would not quite agree with all of the material in this film but a very good film overall. I like that it points out nothing was wasted and that crafts and work were a normal part of everyday life.

"Home Living" a great blog

A great blog:

Home Living by LadyLydiaSpeaks

Her most recent post is a list of some her best articles: Most Requested Posts

"The private world of Tasha Tudor"

An interesting book about the well known children's book illustrator Tasha Tudor and her home, garden, and way of life.

"The private world of Tasha Tudor"

Tasha Tudor has written and illustrated more than seventy-five beloved children's books since her first, Pumpkin Moonshine, in 1938. Now seventy-seven years old, she lives on a farm in southern Vermont, where she has recreated an early Victorian world. To capture this intimate portrait of Tasha Tudor, photographer Richard Brown followed her throughout a year on her farm. By interweaving Tudor's own words and more than 100 color photographs... She says, "Everything comes so easily to me from that period, of that time: threading a loom, growing flax, spinning, milking a cow". Dressed in antique clothing, spinning and weaving her own linen, cooking on a woodstove with nineteenth-century utensils, Tudor inhabits a world that in these evocative photographs speaks to all who long for a simpler existence in harmony with the seasonal rhythms of nature.

More Links:
Cellar Door Books
Tasha Tudor And Family
Tasha Tudor Museum