Dean's Beans Free Trade Coffee & Gifts For Christmas

I haven't written anything for a while and our next gig isn't till New Years Eve First Night Celebration in Hazelton, PA. So I thought I'd take the time to put in a plug for our friends at Dean's Beans in Orange, MA. Remember fresh coffee makes a great gift for Santa and all his helpers. Dean sells organically grown free trade coffee as well as some unique accessories and gift items, including these reusable shopping bags made from recycled coffee bean bags. The bags are hand made by a group of Somali refugees living in Springfield, MA. Dean's ships pretty quickly by UPS, so I'm sure there is still plenty of time to order before Christmas. We just received a box of Marrakesh Express organic free trade coffee beans from Dean's and the UPS driver commented on how he enjoyed the aroma of the freshly roasted beans while doing his route. Maybe a bag of beans will find it's way into his stocking.

Homegrown Yarn Band?

We're really looking forward to our show at Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs, NY, next weekend. I'll be writing more about that next week. But I want to share some of the happenings leading up to the big show. While arranging details for the show with Caffe manager Sarah Craig, Georgianne mentioned that Erica had written the cover story for the October issue of Yarn Forward magazine. When Sarah heard that Erica was a rising star in the knitting world, she suggested having a knitting circle before the show. We thought that was a great idea! To give the knitters an extra incentive to come out to the show, Georgianne and Erica came up with the idea of, at sometime during the evening, having a drawing for a knitter's basket. The basket will be filled with goodies, including a brand new, original, Fiddleknits hat pattern along with the Knit Picks yarn, and set of handcrafted pewter buttons, (made by me!) needed to complete the project. We didn't want the non-knitters to feel left out so we thought we should also give away a non-knitting basket. The second basket will include, among other things, some Homegrown String Band merchandise and a sample bag of our favorite organic fair trade coffee. A few weeks ago I wrote a blog about fair trade coffee from Dean's Beans; I can't say enough about the good people who run this great company! When we called to order the coffee, the good folks at Dean's kindly offered to donate a full pound of freshly roasted, shade grown, fair trade, organic coffee beans. We received the coffee today. So the lucky winner will get The Homegrown String Band CD "Ragged but Right" featuring our almost hit song "The Man Who Dressed in Black" and a pound of "Ring of Fire" coffee: "A dark, smokin' blend of high mountain beans from the active volcanic soils of Indonesia, Timor, and Papua-New Guinea. Eye-opening!" So come see us at Caffe Lena on Saturday, January 23rd, and enjoy a great evening of knitting and acoustic roots music at America's longest continuously operating coffeehouse.

P.S. Here's a link to Erica's latest post on her Fiddleknits blog: 

 "Help for Haiti"  

Photo by Rick Jackofsky