Bountiful harvest

 I like having a blog since I can write about things that interest me like new sewing projects and also interesting things that happen to me related to my business. Here's a great example ..... A lady, Mary, bought 2 of my balsam sachets from one of the retail outlets that I consign with, the Leverett Village Co-op. She got my website address off of the label and went to my website and from there, e.mailed me.  What she told me was that last Christmas her granddaughter gave her a balsam wreath and she saved it!  I am not sure WHY she saved the wreath but she did. She also told me that she had disassembled the wreath, asked me if would I make her some balsam sachets from her wreath? Now, I am not short on needles, in fact, I have a freezer full  of them so I DO NOT need my customers to provide me with needles .What she said to me when she handed me the bag of balsam was that she can't wait to hand a sachet to her granddaughter and say to her...see what I did with the wreath???  OK, NOW I GET IT!!!! I LOVE IT!  Not only that...it sends a message to her granddaughter that I liked your gift so much that I went to the trouble of repurposing it.  To me, the best gift is a thoughtful one!   I dried out Mary's balsam and striped it earlier in the week.  I blogged about how I process the needles on a previous entry.  http://newenglandfiberarts.com/node/22   I timed how long it took me to strip the needles and it was about 30 minutes.  Since I had never dried a balsam wreath before I had NO idea how many needles it would yield, frankly I was surprised by the amount....more than enough to fill Mary's order of 6 sachets since that would only take 6 cups of needles.   Yesterday I made Many's sachets for her. As I was doing this, I realize that there are probably other people out there, like Mary, who might see the value in recycling their wreaths into something useful and I thought...HEY, I can offer to not only process their wreaths but also make balsam gifts for them from their own needles.  There are places that will process your sheep's fleece and then send it back to you and?or, make you yarn out of it so...why not wreaths?   It's not like I don't have PLENTY of balsam needles kicking around and I am looking for a source of needles, I'm not, but I do believe that people would like taking something decorative and then recycling it into something useful so I am going to offer this service now and let people know about it out on Facebook.  THANK YOU Mary for the great idea!