Penny Sanford Designs

Collecting Tiny Glass Ball Ornaments

Three minutes left in today in which to post this blog post...

I'm collecting tiny little glass Christmas Tree Balls.  Do you know where these can be purchased?  I've several ideas to share with you when I have the little balls to work with...

Do you know what your Tupperware is doing??

Rememer the commercials, "It's midnight. Do you know where your children are?"  Or something to that effect.

If you've read any of this blog or followed me on Facebook, you have gleaned that I have a small fondness (obsessive passion) for Yellow Tupperware. Here's a recent photo of the Tupperware that is within arm's reach of me right now in the Sewing Room.



Trust me, it does not begin to show the scope of my addiction to Happy Yellow Tupperware.

The big salad bowl on the left was a gift from Facebook Friend Jeanne in Alabama. Think of it as Friendship Tupperware-ing like Friendship Gardening.  She sends me her piece of Happy Yellow Tupperware and I send her something I made.  This large piece is perfect for my floss bobbin winding project. Details on that new obsession in another post.



The Lettuce Crisper is wonderful to hold the washcloths I am binding plus the pre-cut binding for washcloths and towels plus the thread I am using.  Yep, I shared this photo yesterday. I also realized after I posted yesterday that I had covered the topic of binding wash cloths earlier on the blog...like just a bit over a month ago. GEE, I'm slipping.



The little rectangle lunch box holds my Free Hand Embroidered Felt Dog Project. They are for sale in my Etsy store. These sales are like "egg money" or "mad money" or money for a "pout present". More on this little endeavor in a later post.   Fifteen percent of the gross goes to Westie Rescue (or Scottie Rescue, or Cairn Rescue or Yorkie Rescue, etc.)

Ok, that's enough blogging fun for today. Dinner is ready and the Westies are stalking me. Picture the Australian Game Hunter in Jurassic Park when the Velociraptors finally trick him and catch and eat him. That's a good image of what the Westies are doing to me right now. We only feed them twice a day. Poor things.  LOL

Latest Yellow Kitchen Toys

Gordon, Unc and I made crockpot lasagna yesterday afternoon... plus a from-scratch sour cream German chocolate pound cake... plus decanted a fresh batch of white willow bark extract for our personal use... plus... plus... plus.

It was a very productive day condensed into about five hours. I like to work like that...the three of us working together to get a lot of little tasks done, helping each other.

Here's a peek at my new favorite yellow cooking toys. They are all plastic... or silicone or melamine or whatever... just not glass or crockery.

My glassware and crockery have been taking a licking this year. Man-handling, quite literally! So I'm turning to unbreakable items that can only be melted in the oven... or on a propane burner on top of the stove... or in the dishwasher.  We'll see what other creative ways they come up with to destroy or damage my kitchen toys.

There are already some Westie teeth "personalizations" on one of my fabulous new yellow spatulas. The most expensive one, of course. That was my fault for letting that spatula jump off the kitchen table and down onto the floor where the indoor "wildlife" could get to it. (laughing)

It's All Good... a new phrase I've learned of late from popular vernacular. If the plastic stuff gets destroyed, there is more to be found. It's not worth worrying about. For now, I'm putting up the breakable stuff passed down from my great-grandmother, my grandmother and my  mother.

If you see something in my favorite Happy Yellow color, think of me! Or snap a picture to share with me. Toodles for now...

My Mystery Penny from Australia, c. 1943

I found this little treasure while recently cleaning out a drawer in the house.  

Back when I was a little bitty tyke, like age 4 or 5, I found this little treasure on a playground in Jackson. We lived in Jackson during the week for Mama and Daddy to work, and we came home to the farm every weekend.

I vividly remember opening my grubby little hand and showing my little found treasure to them that afternoon. I'm pretty sure they checked with the other parents to see if another little child had lost it. They taught me ethics like that, so I feel sure they practiced those ethics as well.

All I know is that I was allowed to keep this Australian penny, from 1943. It was a special treasure since my name is Penny.

All these years, I have wanted to have this mounted in a finding that will allow me to wear it as a necklace. There is not enough room to thread a chain through the curled lip of the hat. I've tried numerous times.

You can see there are solder marks on the underside of the little hat that hint this may have been soldered to something...a belt buckle?

Is this a real coin for Australia? It would have been a rather large and thick penny. 

I've seen real U.S. penny coins flattened with the imprint of some tourist destination added. People collect those.  I've never seen anything like this little hat.

Please share any information you might have on this type of coin art. Sharing my little "treasure" with you has been a fun mini trip to Memoryville!

A Fresh Use for Cheater Cloth!

Yesterday was the Christmas Luncheon of the Thomas Rodney Chapter of the Mississippi State Society Daughters of the American Revolution, and my mother and I were responsible for the tablecloths, china, silverware and beverage.

Since I've never outgrown the playhouse phase, I look forward to trying to come up with a different look each year. Compare yesterday's luncheon to last year's Christmas luncheon. and the May luncheon earlier this year.

We are not like one Dallas Socialite Ive read about who keeps a 10,000 square foot warehouse to store and organize her party decorations and table settings. It would be a blast to have that much stuff with which to decorate!

Part of the fun is to put dishes we have used before in a different setting to give them a totally different look.

Sometimes, though, I do have a little trouble finding our stuff tucked in every closet in the house. Ya think Unc would let me have one of the barns on the farm to convert into storage for decorations? HA!

So, I started two months ago putting together the pieces for yesterday's Christmas Luncheon. I don't have the energy yet to wrestle with big Irish linen tablecloths. Miss Dollie is out for six months with shoulder surgery, and she usually is the one who wrestles those big things.

Then I could not find the red damask restaurant-caliber tablecloths we used years ago for some Valentine teas for DAR. We had bought the fabric for a dollar a yard from the factory outlet store in Westpoint. We have enough of that fabric in numerous colors to last us a life time...so, of course I had to store it somewhere in the family farmhouse where even I cannot find it at the moment. It will show up when I am looking for something else.

SO, I had the bright idea to buy some lengths of cheater cloth. My reasoning was that we could use the cheater cloth in a quilt backing for some future quilt, or if it worked well, we could keep them as tablecloths for a decade or so. I love pictures of quilts used as tablecloths, but if you get a tenacious food stain on a family quilt, stain removal might be disastrous.

You would think cheater cloth would be easy to find. NOT necessarily! And I'm a pretty good hunter and finder on the Internet!  But then, it is the chase, the Easter Egg Hunt, that excites me.

First, I found the Moda Christmas-themed fabric that you see in the first picture. I bought eight yards, expecting to make two tablecloths out of the eight yards. As it turned out, I did not have the time or energy to hem anything, so we used the entire eight yards on three joined six foot folding tables. I liked the smoothness of the one long length of fabric, enough so that I think we will just hem that into one very long tablecloth for some future events.

The MODA cheater cloth was 50 inches wide, if memory serves me. That was OK for standard folding tables. The Bear Claw cheater cloth at the head table was a delicious 90 inches wide, and that is what I wanted to find for all the tables.

We pulled from a nook in the attic some pale blue, pale green and pale aqua glass Christmas balls to drizzle along the table and put on the little candelabras, but as we were driving to the Montgomery County Pubic Library in Winona to set up early Saturday morning, I had a moment to look closely at our old glass balls in the sunshine to discover scratches and discoloration.

After unloading at the library, I sent Unc and Gordon to the local Walmart to find ANY glass balls. They did well, and I am proud of them.

The pale blue, pale green and pale aqua would have been better, and larger quantities of drizzled Christmas balls of different sizes would have been even better, but those two options were not available to us yesterday.

The designs of the mixed cheater cloth was so strong that I did not feel even simple greenery would work on the tables. We needed something simple with clean lines like the glass balls.

I'm sharing these could-have-been-improved options in the event you want to use cheater cloth as tablecloths. Please don't think I am unhappy with how the decorations turned out yesterday.

This is my usual after-action evaluation that I mentally process on EVERYTHING from dog baths to business dealings. At 46 years of age, I've finally learned that nothing goes as planned, regardless of how hard you work to plan and prepare. The real life lesson is to learn to be flexible and understanding.

Photo three shows a remnant of cheater cloth I had bought long ago, a bit over 3 yards, barely enough for an eight foot folding table. It was not even 45 inches wide, but I would recommend you buy 50 inch wide fabric at a minimum. The applique design was in keeping with the Christmas and quilt theme.

See the plate of cookies? Unc made them. Yep, you remembered correctly. He is 82 years old. When Miss Dollie had surgery last month, Unc decided to make some cookies. He did a great job, and he has been making cookies every few days since. He even took some to Miss Dollie after surgery.

He had made some cookies with the walnuts he has been shelling, but Friday night, he started to think that some of the ladies might not be able to eat nuts, so he made another batch of cookies without nuts! I was so impressed with his thoughtfulness!

There he is in the fourth picture peeping over shoulders to see who picked up one of his cookies. He kept up with who tried his cookie and who said something to him about his culinary achievement! It was cute.

The ladies came dressed to the nines in Christmas reds and Christmas sweaters. Here are three I asked permission to share on this blog.

Our chapter regent, Rose Anne Miller of Duck Hill, MS, wore an adorable sweater with embellishments. Santa's beard and the snow on the chimney were given extra dimension from iridescent milky white sequins.

Shirley Dance of Winona may have developed a complex because I really was following her around the library, trying to study her jacket... about as inconspicuously as an elephant in gold ballet slippers.  Shirley is a a soon-to-be member of the chapter, and we had not met. Finally, she came up and introduced herself, probably to find out the identity of this strange woman who was fixated on her quilted jacket. It is ok, Shirley. the other members can tell you that I am not dangerous, just insatiably curious about some things, like patchwork and quilted clothing!

I saved a place for Faye Pearson of Kilmichael, MS, to sit next to me because I knew that she and I would chatter about china. You may remember her as the very thoughtful friend who found the one missing plate of my Lenox Colonial Wreath plate set and surprised me with it at Christmas one year. 

I ran out of time to go chase Elizabeth Eldridge around to study her sweater. She knows me, so she would not have been unnerved. Gordon grabbed a shot for me, and I'd say the redbirds were applique with broad-stroke crewel embroidery for the greenery and stems. The berries must be little beads, and it looks like some sequins on the red wings?

The pretty little human songbird  in the last picture is Anna Greenlee, age 14, of Kilmichael, MS. Her mother Rebecca Hodges, M.D., came with her, and I overheard her telling the ladies that much of her free time is spent driving her talented daughter to singing engagements.

Anna has extraordinary poise, especially for a 14 year old. The first two songs that she sang in a lower range (think contralto) truly showcased the richness of her voice.

I was sitting there, enjoying the beautiful Christmas songs, trying to think of words to convey the timbre of this young voice. "Mink" and "Sable" came to mind.

Rosemary Clooney (deceased) and Diana Krawl (actively recording) came to mind.  

I hope the rest of the world will one day know the name Anna Greenlee of Kilmichael, MS. Don't forget that Mississippi continues to bless the world with some amazing musical talent!

Finding Potter Becky Bolton Crisswell

I am tickled pink...or tickled pink pottery! (OK, that turn of phrase is a bit of a stretch, but the wet clay is a little pinkish in the picture below? Maybe?)

Becky Bolton Crisswell of Calera, Alabama, sent me a note listing a few of her upcoming shows! Thank you Becky!

Great picture, Becky! I see more than a few pieces on those shelves, waiting to be fired, that I WANT!

I've missed the October 4th show in Hoover, AL, and I don't see gas prices letting us hop over to Northport, AL, by October 18 and 19th.

If any of my blog readers are going to the October 18 and 19th Kentuck Festival in Northport, AL, please let me know.

Paul, a visitor to my pottery pictures on my Flickr photostream, looked up Crisswell in the White Pages for Calera, AL. This is what he found:

T Crisswell
2588 Highway 67
Calera, AL 35040-3427
(205) 668-2697

That matches the address on the envelope I received from Becky.

(Why do I feel like I am suddenly an FBI agent on an episode of Without A Trace?)

Then at the bottom of Becky's note, she lists two shops that carry her work, so I looked up the contact info:
Artists Incorporated
www.artistsincorporated.com
3365 Morgan Dr
Vestavia Hills, AL 35216
(205) 979-8990

New Environs
www.newenvirons.net
2706 19th Street South
Homewood, AL 35209
(205) 870-7721

So, if you see a platter like my catfish casserole dish from Becky, please tell her to set it aside for me!

Thanks to Paul and Becky and others who have emailed to help me locate this wonderful potter!

As an artist (in a different medium), I can certainly understand why Becky no longer takes orders. Thankfully she is still making the catfish design! Save me more of this design, Becky (vase, pitcher, several platters).

Did you see these other blog posts about potters whose work I collect?
Tab Boren, Mantachie, MS
Susan Brown Freeman, Birmingham, AL
Darlene Clifton Keith, Mentone, AL
Fran Myers, Summerville, GA
Mississippi Mud Works, Ocean Springs, MS.
Pottery with the Mark of Zoro, bought in Enterprise, AL
Catfish Pottery by B. Boltin Crisswell, Calera, AL
Pottery by Greg Freeland, Montgomery, AL

And I am not finished sharing my pottery collection with you!

Pottery by Greg Freeland, Montgomery, AL

The pottery you saw in the previous Fabulous Figs post and the Pink Naked Ladies post was made by Greg Freeland of Montgomery, AL.

I "discovered" him at an outdoor art festival at (I think) Enterprise State Junior College in Enterprise, AL. That is where I lived when I worked for five plus years in Enterprise.

The first piece I bought was a covered bean pot. I broke the lid somehow, so the piece became a beautiful vase!
Photographing this piece pre-Arm Thing, I fell in love all over again with his drippy glazes. This was the only piece he had in this greenish sage turquoise seafoam colors.

The next year I went to the outdoor art festival for the explicit purpose of buying another piece or two or three of his pottery.

On that second year, he had none of the greenish pieces like the bean pot of the previous year. This turquoise bowl was the closest color to the color palate that I like to collect in pottery, and he had only one piece in that strong turquoise color!

The rest of his pieces were dark blue, dark green, dark brown, etc.

This bowl seems to be made from a different clay with a tight grain. It seems to me to be a porcelain clay body...different than the porcelain that I use in my sculpture.

His treatment of the glazes on the bottom of the bowl were a bit of a surprise, but if this is made from porcelain, then even in the bisque stage, the porcelain clay is impervious to water.

We've had Internet access problems off and on all week, so I have not been able to search for Greg Freeland on the Internet. I did find him in the same sentences and in the same exhibits with Susan Brown Freeman.

The Montgomery Museum of Art mentioned having his pottery for sale in their gift shop.

Why can't these potters have a website that makes them easy to find, like www.gregfreeland.com or www.susanbrownfreeman.com?

Anyway, I wrote to Susan Brown Freeman at the address on her business card from the mid 1980's. At least the letter has not come back as undeliverable. I've emailed a few other rabbit trails trying to find some of the other potters I have shared from my collection. So far, no success, but this blog has connected me with a few "lost designers and artists".   I plan to share those fun connections with you in the future.

If anyone can help me find an address or email or website or phone number for Greg Freeland, please let me know.

You already know what I am going to say next! "I want to buy more of his work!"

Did you see these other blog posts about potters whose work I collect?
Tab Boren, Mantachie, MS
Susan Brown Freeman, Birmingham, AL
Darlene Clifton Keith, Mentone, AL
Fran Myers, Summerville, GA
Mississippi Mud Works, Ocean Springs, MS.
Pottery with the Mark of Zoro, bought in Enterprise, AL
Catfish Pottery by B. Boltin Crisswell, Calera, AL

Unc's Eye for Hidden Treasure

My Uncle Charles Hamer, "Unc", has a very special talent that I don't quite know how to describe. He can spot a treasure in the rough from great distances, but when you want him to see something, like a power tool carelessly left on the kitchen table, he just can't see it! We talked about this a little in this blog post.

So, here I am editing photos of some of Unc's Hidden Treasure Discoveries with my left hand, while watching Baby's Day Out (1994). That is such a magical movie. We MUST buy it on DVD! Strangely enough, it is not giving me baby fever.

Sweet, thoughtful Gordon changed the sheets on the bed after lunch and would not let me do anything to help. Then he put me in my own version of a wifey playpen...the oversized bed tray with laptop computer, television remote, couple of telephones and my cell phone. To make sure I could not crawl out of my playpen, he called the Westies up on the bed to lay around me, on top of my blankie.  See? There would be no way I could extricate myself from this bed while Gordon ran to town to pick up medicine and a couple of items Mama needed.

That is ok, the movie is keeping me tucked securely in this bed this afternoon! Fred Thompson, playing an FBI agent just told his driver, "McClusky, radio the other cars that we are turning around to go to the Tic Tock and get the Boo Boo."  ROFLOL 

It has been 14 years since this movie came out. I wonder what the little tyke looks like now and if he is still in movies. The kid had an amazing repertoire of expressions!

"You're surrounded," Fred Thompson just called out on his megaphone, "Throw down the Boo Boo (book) and come out with your hands up." 

What can I say?  Pain meds make me easy to entertain, I guess.

So while the movie distracts me from this right arm that is paying me back for exercising it too much yesterday (OUCH!), I'll tell you about a couple of Unc's Found Treasures in the category of burl.

What is burl, I hear you asking? Well, it is a wart like growth on a tree, usually around the roots or base of the tree. Burl inlay in furniture is highly prize and expensive. Burl veneer is, as far as I can understand, cut in a long paper thin sheet around and around the wood wart (burl). Think curly fries.

Then that veneer is painstakingly glued to the surface of the furniture, lending its extraordinary pattern to the furniture.  I saw a picture of an antique bed recently that reminded me of the burl veneer set my friend Eloise had, handed down through the generations. If I can find that picture again, I will come back and post it here.

This burl that  Unc found at the base of a Sweet Gum tree, was attached in just two places. The third picture shows where the tree was attached to the burl outgrowth.

Unc saw a turtle in this knobby growth. A few slices of his pocket knife, and a turtle magically emerged!

Jenna Z and I had a fun email conversation about turtles recently when I was blogging about Unc's trot line catching some turtles. Her mom takes in turtles and feeds them in the pond on their farm. The rescued turtles apparently won't stay for the free meals. Hey, Jenna, you will have to be on the lookout for a burl bump that would make a nice turtle!

The second burl treasure Unc has saved recently looks something like a little mole or vole. If Unc carved down the tail part and shortened the legs, it would be a dead ringer. From another angle, it looks rather like a sea lion sunning itself.

Like a master diamond cutter who studies a diamond for months before cutting it, Unc is not yet ready to carve on this cypress treasure!

Then the other night while flipping through our latest issue of Traditional Home (September, 2008), I saw an article on burl bowls!

Leigh and Leslie Keno twins, of Antiques Roadshow fame, apparently are really into bowls made from burl wood. The magazine article even shows a bowl they tried to carve as youngsters.

If the cherry wood my uncle gave me to start carving my dough bowl  at the first of the year was tough to carve, imagine how hard burl wood would be! I can see why those boys didn't finish their own burl bowl!

Considering I can barely lift a pencil with my right arm, it may be a while before I can lift a hammer to finish carving out my dough bowl. Unc MUST have thought it would be funny to see me struggle with hard maple for my first dough bowl!

Don't you wish a mole or a wart on you were as highly prized as a burl outgrowth on a tree?

One of those dough bowls in the article fetched more than $100,000 at auction.

Catfish Pottery by B. Boltin Crisswell, Calera, AL

This wonderful pottery casserole decorated with a catfish motif is signed B. Boltin(?) Crisswell. I bought it in Oxford, MS, at some art event in the early 1990's.

I'm pretty sure this is Becky Crisswell of Calera, AL, who shows up in a Google search as displaying her work in Oxford, as lately as 2007. She shows up with Susan Brown Freeman in 2007 as one of the honored artists by the Alabama State Council on the Arts.

Hey, at least I seem to be attracted to the potters who go on to make a good name for themselves! Maybe some reader from Oxford who is into pottery can help me find the current address, phone, email or website for Becky Crisswell.

My often repeated phrase that we all know by heart by now:  "I want to buy more of her work!"

Look at her signature. Don't you think her maiden name is "Boltin"?

I just love the catfish motif on the lid, and I have used this casserole to serve various food, but I have not baked in it.

I'm sure it is bake proof and dishwasher proof as most pottery is these days, but I want to hand wash my pieces. It is like petting a fur coat...an irresistible impulse!

Many of you have shared photos or names of potters you collect. You are driving me crazy in the same way it feels when Gordon strokes my hair or when, as a child, Mama combed the hair at the nape of my neck with her fingers during quiet times. A delicious, tingly, drive you crazy sensation!

Please keep those comments, emails, potter names and pottery photos coming!

For those who are not into this Pottery Passion, I promise we are about 55 percent finished with photographs of my collection. I'll start intermingling the posts with something different. *wink*

No one has complained. I just know hand thrown or hand made pottery is not everyone's "thing".

Sewing and quilting and Westies will also return to this blog, I assure you. We are still pushing on two specific pottery deadlines, so I feel guilty if I take time to sew.

Did you see these other blog posts about potters whose work I collect?
Tab Boren, Mantachie, MS
Susan Brown Freeman, Birmingham, AL
Darlene Clifton Keith, Mentone, AL
Fran Myers, Summerville, GA
Mississippi Mud Works, Ocean Springs, MS.
Pottery with the Mark of Zoro, bought in Enterprise, AL

Pottery with the Mark of Zoro

I call this the Mark of Zoro because I can't read the name on the bottom of this fabulous clay basket.

I bought this piece, one of my favorites in my collection, at Gallery 2 in Enterprise, AL, sometime before 1991. I remember falling in love with this piece and frantically hoping they would not sell it before I had purchased their few pieces of Susan Brown Freeman that I just could not live without, especially that centerpiece bowl!

I kept the card with this potter's name for a long time, stored in the piece of pottery.  Over time, as I grabbed this favorite piece off of the shelf to use for flowers or utensils or peas or so many, many more serving uses, I failed to put the card back in the pottery basket.  So now, I don't know who made this piece or where I can find his studio or more of his work.

The signature and my memory tell me this was made by a man, but I may be wrong. I'm pretty sure Gallery II only sold pottery made by potters in residence in Alabama, so Potter "Zoro" is probably, hopefully, still throwing pots somewhere in Alabama.

If you can read his signature or if you are familiar with this potter, PLEASE let me know. I very much want more of his work! (Hmmmnnn, have I not said that about every potter I have shown you so far?)

That wonderful gift shop in Enterprise, AL, devoted to pottery and art glass, Gallery II, is no longer in existence, I fear. I have tried to find mention of the shop online, to no avail.

If you happen to know where the shop moved or if you know Mary and Ed Goff, the owners, please let me know.

I miss those Alabama days when I could leave the stress of the workday at the shop door and walk around that shop, absorbing the work of so many talented artists!. The store was a renovated turn-of-the-century house, and I can just "see" the rooms filled with beautiful pottery and art glass. Happy, happy memories!

Did you see these other blog posts about potters whose work I collect?
Tab Boren, Mantachie, MS
Susan Brown Freeman, Birmingham, AL
Darlene Clifton Keith, Mentone, AL
Fran Myers, Summerville, GA
Mississippi Mud Works, Ocean Springs, MS