My New ETSY Shop

I am excited to let you know that I have opened an ETSY shop called LakesCountryHandMade. I am selling products I made including hand spun yarn and hand knit items, as well as store samples from my yarn shop inventory purchase. You can search on the store name in ETSY, or you can click on the following link to get to my shop: https://www.etsy.com/shop/LakesCountryHandmade

I have been thinking about doing this for a long time. My summer was busy with a string of (mostly family) house guests (with necessary covid precautions), tornado cleanup, and other activities. Now that the weather is too cold to have windows open or socialize outside, and we are looking at a long stretch of indoor time alone, I decided to get the ETSY shop going while the season is right for buying hats and headbands and knitted things.

Following are photos of a few items I made myself that are listed for sale:

I have been making things ever since I can remember. In elementary school my sister and I would cut simple doll clothes out of fabric scraps. My mom taught me how to use the sewing machine in about 6th grade, so that when my junior high home economics class was making hemmed dish towels, I had already sewed some simple garments. In high school and early adulthood I made many of my own clothes, including my wedding dress.

I first learned how to knit in an after school class in elementary school. I have a memory of knitting rows on a red scarf in plain garter stitch. Later I learned how to crochet, and I also dabbled in macrame, needlepoint, cross stitch, and embroidery.

Sometime in the early years of high school in the 1970’s, a friend of mine and I took a community education lingerie sewing class where we learned how to make slips, underwear, and negligees with stretchy lace. We bought tricot fabric, elastic, lace, and other related supplies at the Munsingwear outlet store near downtown Minneapolis. Munsingwear was a manufacturer of undergarments with origins in the late 1880’s. George Munsing received a patent for a union suit in the early 1890’s before central heating was a thing, and later in the 1920’s Munsingwear was the largest manufacturer of underwear in the world. I can’t say I have made any lingerie since then, but I have used some of the techniques I learned, such as sewing elastic on to a waist. That same friend and I also went through a phase of sewing stuffed animals.

A few years later my mom and I took a class where we made structured wool blazers with lapels, welt buttonholes and pockets, a vent in the back, and a lining. It was a lot of work and I never did it again. That blazer hung in the basement closet for years after I stopped wearing suits to work. Once our son wore it for a halloween costume. Before we moved last summer I finally donated it.

Lately the only sewing I do is mending, facemasks or upcycling. Over the last 15 years I have focused my creative energies on knitting and spinning, and now I am learning to do basic weaving on a 15″ wide table top size rigid heddle loom. Who knows what will spark my interest going forward.

P.S. I knitted another pair of green thick socks that fit me. We now have his and hers boot socks.