Thank you, Martha Stewart!

There's Plover, top right side!

Very many thanks to Martha Stewart Living magazine and Crafts Editor Blake Ramsey for featuring Plover's new Charm Packs in their April 2011 issue. They sewed the 5" squares together and made scented sachets from them! I'd never have thought to do that, but now I'll have to make them and fill with lavender buds. Lovely. Our Charm Packs are for sale here if you want to follow suite.

April 2011

America, 1939-1943

The cuteness—kids sleeping at a square dance in OK. Photo by Russell Lee

School children in New Mexico singing, 1940. Photo by Russell Lee

This was not at all what I'd planned to blog about, but I was browsing the Hermitage site (you must check out Hermitage if you're ever in the market for amazing, artful wallpaper) and saw a link to gorgeously restored photos taken during the American Depression. I know, I know—they're from last summer, not new—but people are still commenting on them, and I swear, the comments are just as great as the photos. Read them! And I must agree with the folks at Hermitage that the colorful prints and patterns the folks in the photos are wearing are alone worth a look. It was the Depression, and yet there's something about those prints that feels more joyful than what we all wear today.

Chopping cotton in Georgia. Photo by Jack Delano

Quilting with Plover Organic!

Plover's organic cotton Fat Quarters!

Very exciting news: Plover Organic has launched a quilting line! We've got 100% organic cotton Charm Packs and Fat Quarters available now for sale on our website. Quilting fans alerted us years ago to the dearth of organic fabrics available for crafting and quilting, so we've been wanting to do this for some time. Now, in true eco fashion, we've finally repackaged our remnants into craft-ready bundles. (Looking for scraps of different sizes? Email us and we'll try to help!) Happy quilting!

Plover's Charm Pack

Erdem Inspiration

From Erdem's S/S 2011 collection

I am so in love with Erdem's Spring/Summer 2011 collection right now. Just got a sales email from Barneys, of course, to make me drool. These scarves! (I wanted to show them here, but you have to go to the Barney's site to see the detail and really appreciate the prints.) Is anyone doing color and print better than him right now? I don't think so. It was so hard just to go through the lookbook and pick which looks to show here!

These shorts!

Sweet dress

Thanks, Daily Candy!

Our Pinwheel/Blue Dots collection

Thanks to Daily Candy for being #1 on today's 25 Reasons to Go Back to Bed! They featured our Blue Dots sheets, which, now that I think of it, are kind of a perfect gift to give for Valentine's Day, no? Organic, soft, encouraging lounging around in bed...? Just a thought.

Latest From Liberty

"Willow's Garden C," by Sally Haysom

Thanks to True Up for reminding us that Liberty of London's new collection is up online for sale here. The designs are a collaboration between the Liberty Design Studio and children's illustrators. Some of it is a bit twee (which should be expected, I suppose), but there's some very cool stuff here. Some of my favorites are already sold out!

The colors in this are amazing; "David Joe A," by Jane Ray

"Helena's Party D," by Lauren Child

Portlandia Premiere!

Put A Bird On It! A still from "Portlandia," premiering tonight on IFC

So exciting—tonight is the premiere of "Portlandia," the new sketch comedy series by the brilliant Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen. Although we don't have cable (it airs on IFC), we were lucky enough to see the advance screening last weekend in Portland, and can confirm that it's completely hilarious. It might hit a little too close to home for some Portlanders, but it's all done in good fun, and there's a lot to see the humor in. (I'll admit I do know the names of most of the big local farms around here—though not the names of the individual chickens!—and I actually own both pieces of luggage in the photo above, although mine don't have birds on them! See? Very close to home.) Will people start making fun of Portland now? Hmmm...I hope not. Portland is definitely radical in a lot of ways, but I feel like people here are really trying to live in a responsible, thoughtful, kind way, and it's an amazing city to live in because of that. It's its own quirky little city-state, for better or for worse. But mostly for the better!