My Favourite Articles This Week

How Agatha Christie helped popularize surfing. So interesting! I don’t think of Agatha Christie as a surfer, but it turns out, she was an avid one!

How the history of shopping in the United States ended up turning American shoppers into total nightmares. A fascinating long read on company’s cost cutting and short staffing, the history of customer service, and how department stores accidentally created the concept of a shopper’s overarching entitlement.

This joyful video is so wonderful, it makes me a little teary so see something that feels so happy and irreverent and trusting in the curiosity and good of people- Stand Here for a Dance Party.

How to be less judgmental of yourself and others.

My Favourite Links This Week

If you have taken advantage of the last little bit of peach season and find yourself with a basket of peaches lingering around, this peach bread would be a delicious treat to keep the taste of the season around a little longer. Recipe can be found over here.

This shredded barbecue chicken casserole is a great dinner idea that can be used in a lot of different ways- over rice, in wrap to make a taco or a burrito, on nachos- all sorts of things! And it’s super easy to make, too. I skipped the fried onion bits, and it was delicious. Find the recipe right here.

I love this idea – painting a cheap cotton rug to suit your decor! Great steps to follow, and painter’s tape helps give the crisp lines. And if it fades, you can touch it up! Find the full DIY over here.

If you would love to have a fun pair of canvas shoes- says, decked out in florals or possibly in Pokémon characters (that’s what my kids would love!)- then this would be a really fun project. It’s all done with iron-on transfer paper, so you could print anything you would like on the iron on transfer paper, iron it on your shoes, spray a sealant, and voila! Custom sneakers! Find the full DIY right here.

Perhaps you are thinking you could use some storage baskets? This is a great pattern for crocheting your own big, rectangular storage baskets that would be great on shelves to hide clutter (or more accurately, my craft supplies and yarn!). Find the great tutorial on Ami’s blog, here.

I’ll be doing a longer post on it very soon, but I’ll be teaching a couple classes virtually in September, and I’d love it if you would join me! The two classes are How to Embroider on Your Knits, a full workshop with a custom design that we will be working with in the live workshop. And the other is How to Photograph Your Knits for Social Media– a workshop I used to love running in person that I’ll be trying out online for the first time ever! I’ll be blogging in more detail about both of these very soon, but in the meantime, you might want to snag a ticket!

Have a wonderfully relaxing and restorative weekend, friends.

xo Julie