Uncategorized

love at first sight: emily sutton’s charming watercolors

~ jama ~ 22 Comments

Several years ago, this lovely pen-and-ink and watercolor painting caught my eye as I was intently browsing the web for art that is beautiful, handmade, and strikingly original.

And there was more:

*swoons*

You know what a fool I am for fine china and crockery, especially pieces that are decidedly British. Let’s just say there was a lot of sighing, a quickened pulse, and an immediate desire to learn more about the artist.

Emily Sutton! She hails from North Yorkshire, is a graduate of the Edinburgh College of Art (2008), and she also studied at York College and the Rhode Island School of Design.

The more I saw of her work, the more I fell in love. Not only do I like the pattern and intricate detail, her choice of subjects is definitely after my own heart — old-time shop windows and high streets, historic buildings, antiques, ephemera, vintage tins, Victorian transferware, curious found objects, dollhouses, the alphabet!

Continue reading →

time to get your cosy on

~ jama ~ 16 Comments
cosycardigan
Hand Knitted Christmas Cardigan Cosy by rTracyO

Surely the best part of winter is having reason to drink even more tea. Gotta keep warm, right?

‘Tis not the season for mug-in-the-microwave tea. Nay, winter tea calls for the careful selection of just the right teapot, just the right cup and saucer, and your favorite silver teaspoon. It often means turning your nose up at tea bags (gasp!) in favor of that raise-the-eyebrow indulgence, loose tea. Oh yes — you’re worth it, you tea slut, you.

Loose loose loose.

Don’t worry, I won’t tell your mama.

And as long as you’re gonna brew a perky pot (better look sharp as Mr. Darcy is sure to visit), you know very well this will require some patience. Once it’s ready you’ll want to sip and savor ever so slowly, while you dip into that bodice ripper socially redeeming literary novel, or skillfully chat up your dapper British tea companion.

cosyfeltflowers
Vintage Felt Cosy

It was for times like these that lovely, adorable, whimsical tea cosies were invented. They likely appeared around the same time the Duchess of Bedford popularized afternoon tea in late 19th century Britain. With so much serious chit chat and juicy gossip going on — and when one is trading scandalous bon mots, one must never rush — they had to find a way to keep their teapots warm.

Continue reading →

read together, stay together poster by aram kim

~ jama ~ 7 Comments

NYC-based author/illustrator Aram Kim has just created this awesome 8.5″ x 11″ poster as a free download for everyone. Simply click here to access and print out the PDF file. Perfect for classrooms and libraries! 🙂

 

your table’s ready

~ jama ~ 57 Comments
by Rudi Hurzlmeier

Hello and Happy New Year!

We’re baaaaaaack! Hope you had a nice holiday. Other than a little adventure with our well pump on New Year’s Eve, we managed to survive all the busyness, insane consumption of cookies and undue pressure to be merry and jingly and ho ho ho all the time, and now we’re just happy to get back to our quiet routine here in the woods with bears, books, and warm cups of tea.

 

Like that wonderful bear in Mr. Hurzlmeier’s painting, I’m tipping my hat to you. I’m glad you’re here because we’ve saved a special seat for you at the table. If you please, says Mr. Bear, make yourself at home.

 

I hope you don’t mind, but we had to make today’s tea with bottled water. That’s because our tap water still smells like bleach. When the new pump was installed, the contractor sanitized our well. We were lucky to find someone on a holiday weekend who provides emergency service. One minute you’re washing and rinsing the dishes, the next minute you turn on the bathroom tap to brush your teeth and no water at all. 😦

It’s good to know you can actually call someone close to midnight and they’re actually cordial and patient and try to troubleshoot with you over the phone before agreeing to come over bright and early the next morning. So we welcomed 2017 without clean water and there was no dumpling soup or any other cooking going on but we were just relieved we didn’t have to check into a hotel and wait days and days to get someone to fix things.

Did I mention one reason the well pump failed was because we had a power outage on Christmas Eve? Chain of events, chain of events. Never a dull moment.

 

Continue reading →

Book Resources for The Nian Monster

~ jama ~ 1 Comment

Happy Book Birthday to Andrea Wang! The Nian Monster (with illustrations by Alina Chau) is officially out today! This post features some awesome resources — a teacher’s guide, craft, and event kit! Also check out the other Launch Week posts for even more. Leave a comment at any of them for a chance to win a signed copy!

Andrea Wang's avatarEMU's Debuts

Xingling, the main character in THE NIAN MONSTER, is a resourceful girl. When confronted by a ravenous monster, she keeps her wits about her in order to fend Nian off. She’s not afraid to ask for help, either. Over the past year, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to get THE NIAN MONSTER into the hands of readers. I heard over and over how everybody loves freebies. So in addition to swag like bookmarks and magnets, I decided to offer additional book-related resources. And, like Xingling, I reached out and asked for help from my community — the wonderful kidlit community.

Here are a few of the resources that were created for my book:

A Teacher’s Guide: Arguably, not every picture book needs a teacher’s guide, especially if it’s fiction. But I felt that there were enough cultural and geographical aspects to my book that a teacher, librarian, or parent might…

View original post 603 more words