Our dear friend Lynn Mattingly is a renowned fiber artist, and has been practicing and teaching quilting for decades. An exceptional sense of color-combining, a fabulous collection of fabrics and a mastery of design and craftsmanship combine to make Lynn’s work really special. We love seeing her beautiful pot-holders hanging on our stove, and they have held up in our kitchen for a very long time. Sturdy and machine-washable, they are not only gorgeous but also practical.
This year we offer her Baby Quilts, Quilted Pot-holders and Table-Runners, and Peace Garlands. Lynn lives just over the hills in Paonia, CO.
We met Nicole at an art festival last summer, where her work stood out as gems of elegant, practical, original design and superb crafting. Working on the wheel, she often alters her pieces by removing areas of clay to create forms with movement and flowing lines. Her shapes and surface decoration are contemporary and playful, and most of her current work is fired in the soda kiln that Nicole recently built herself. The current pandemic has complicated Nicole’s ability to conduct soda firings, so she is producing her delightful high-fire pieces in a conventional kiln.
For decades, our friend Tom Theobald of Niwot Honey Farm has been nurturing bees, harvesting honey, and crafting the finest, most elegant, romantic, hand-dipped taper candles you’ll find anywhere. They are naturally dripless and smokeless, and infuse the room with the gentle, warm fragrance of honey. They go perfectly with our Traditional Majolica candle holders. Available in pairs, either clear-wrapped or gift boxed.
Our friend Fred Hall is a dedicated ‘rock hound’, with a special passion for meteorites and petrified wood. His expeditions in Utah have yielded some wonderful specimens from the Jurassic era, including segments in which the exterior bark texture has been preserved, and the interiors have been replaced with vividly multicolored agate. Fred has polished the top surfaces of many of the specimens to reveal the beauty of the agate.
Artisan Renée McDougall of Longmont became interested in crafting with glass while working at the Stained Glass Supply Company. She works mostly in fused glass, a process that can take up to 11 hours from start to finish. Renée uses her home studio for crafting many different glass pieces, from jewelry to bowls and hanging art.
We are fortunate that Theresa Haberkorn, woodcut printmaker, has made Boulder her home for more than two decades. Her masterful woodcut prints are found in exhibits and collections nation-wide, and she teaches her artform as well. Theresa brings her art to household items as well, hand-crafting a collection of beautiful block-printed cotton tea towels, a charming wall calendar (just in!), hand-bound journals, and an assortment of cards.
Our friends Thea Tenenbaum and Raffaele Malferrari have for many years been well known around Boulder and beyond for their charming tradition-based Italian majolica pottery. Since Thea’s sad passing, Raffaele and their daughter Gelsie have been working together in the studio to continue the family’s tradition.
We’d been looking for some finely handcrafted small wood products for the home, at affordable prices, and finally found Wooden Images. Located in Missoula MT, the workshop was founded in 1980 in John Bakula’s garage. In 1981 his brother Mark joined him, and they’ve been designing and creating intricately patterned items that are original, functional and beautiful since then.
Zink Metal Art is the collaborative effort of Charlotte and Ben Zink, who have made their whimsical and flowing designs of metal for home and garden for the past 15 years in Berthoud, CO.
As Colorado gardeners, we’ve come to expect snow in October (last year it was October 10), but September?! In the past 24 hours, we saw a temperature swing of more than 60 degrees, going from record-breaking heat to one of the earliest recorded snow falls in the state (the earliest recorded area snowfall was in 1961 when Denver received over 4″ of snow on Labor Day).
Unless you have an ‘ornamental’ grass that self-sows aggressively, leave grasses and their seedheads standing. If they are ‘cool-season’ grasses, you’ll want to leave them until about mid-February, then cut them to 3” above the ground so they can begin making unimpeded new growth as soon as the soil thaws. Dormant ‘warm-season’ grasses can remain attractive until warm weather comes and don’t need to be cut down until April.
At Harlequin’s Gardens we will not be leaving our jobs on September 20. Instead we will be at work for Harlequin’s where we are always working to help you and the planet. AND we will be giving away one Free bag of compost with each purchase, on Friday, the 20th.
Non-toxic Herbicides
This year’s Taste of Tomato was a blast! We love the new location at Growing Gardens’ Barn, with its’ beautiful view of the Flatirons, easy access, and wonderful staff. The tasting featured 44 different varieties of tomatoes, with Aunt Ruby’s German Green winning the greatest number of votes. Participants brought in some wonderful new varieties this year, including Brad’s Atomic Grape, Thornburn’s Terracotta, and Indigo Cherry. Look for the most popular varieties from this year and previous years when you come to buy your organic tomato starts next spring at Harlequin’s Gardens. Every year we grow 80+ great varieties for all kinds of uses and growing conditions!
We are having a real revolution in our relationship with our soils. The turning point is our change in focus from soil fertility to soil health. In the last 60 years of the “Green Revolution” (i.e. the petrochemical boom), soil was viewed as a physical structure and fertility was viewed as a measure of chemicals in the soil — primarily NPK, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. The petroleum industry could make these macronutrients from natural gas, which make plants grow but often in poor health. Weak plants attract insect pests and fungal diseases, so more petroleum in the forms of insecticides and fungicides added to the success of the oil industry. But this approach has led to “Peak Soil” where land is losing productivity, crops are losing nutritional value, the soil is eroding at extreme rates, and the health of animals and people has declined.