May 6, 2012
 New For Spring!
The sun is out the ski is blue…planted potatoes yesterday, feeling good & a little inspired….
This is very light & comfortable outfit. The crossover top is made with organic blend of cotton & soy fiber and spandex, light weight jersey knit, collar rolls just for fun. Leaf Print skirt is organic cotton interlock knit has 6 panels for fullness and a 6 inch wide wasteband can be folded over for a lower waste fit, or left unfolded for more coverage.
Happy spring to all of you! More news soon,
Peace,
Beth
January 25, 2011
 First, I am in love with this fabric this skirt is made with: It is a blend of organic cotton & soy fiber with a little spandex, a T-shirt weight Jersey knit. It has a beautiful drape and I’ve found it in some great colors, a heathered navy being today’s color. Basically this is a 1/2 circle skirt with a flat elastic waistband and a gross grain drawstring, is fitted from waist to hip and falls very elegantly from hip to hem. (Available at boysenberryvt.com).
Sometimes my best designs I come out of ideas I get doing special orders for customers. I have a customer who has a lot of sensitivities to fabric and who has found she has no problems with this soy/cotton fabric. She has multiples of everything I’ve designed in this fabric and she asked me to duplicate a skirt that she loved using the soy fabric. I made her up a skirt and she went away happy with the parting words, “I’d love one in Navy too”.
Later, when I ordered Navy for another special order, I started thinking about that skirt again: what I didn’t like about the original and what I could do to make it better…basically b frocked it…so I made a few changes, simplified a bit and made up another one that was close to the one you see here.
I couldn’t decide whether to add it to the line or not but the other day Skirt Lady came into the store to shop. I got the skirt out of the pile of not ready for prime time samples and show it to her. She didn’t even want to talk about it, she didn’t even try it on, she just wanted to buy it, which I of course let her do. I did get a bunch of input from her that about why she loves this skirt so much, and tweaked it a little more, for the now Skirt #3, ready for prime time.
Here’s what she told me: the combo elastic and drawstring, (in this case it’s actually gross-grain ribbon), give it a versatility that she finds invaluable. She can have fat & skinny days, pull it up to her waist or down to her hips and tie it so it stays at either place. This not only allows for different levels of comfort it also can be used to alter the length of the skirt, depending on mood, shoes, shirt length, occasion, etc. This woman travels a lot and another things she loves about this skirt, and the soy fabric in general, is that if folds up very compactly for packing, the wrinkles fall out without ironing AND, if they need to be hand washed, they are dry in the morning.
OK, so I’m not making this up, she really said all that.
Like I said, I really love this fabric.
Peace,
Beth
November 22, 2010
It is so cool to see our fleece hats in England and we are having a great time here in Vermont, reading Ira’s Trip log, and of course looking at his pics!
 "Dear Beth,
We went to visit my mums family in Newcastle Upon
Tyne which is on the East Coast up towards Scotland. It took hours in the
car to get there (so they tell me) but I didn't mind as I slept the whole
way. Mum and dad took me to Tynemouth which is where they got married
ages ago (before I was born). We walked out along the causeway at the mouth
of the river Tyne. I looked at the waves of the north sea with my daddy.
We walked all the way out to the lighthouse at the end and I was very glad I had
my penguin hat because it was windy and cold! Love IRA"
Looking Forward to a lovely Thanksgiving with the family and friends,
and hope you all have a wonderful time too.
Peace, Beth
November 18, 2010
My Friend Ira has gone on a trip to England with his Mum and Dad. I miss him terrible but he is sending me letters and pictures of himself in his collection of boysenberry hats to share with you.
Dear Beth 
I am having a lovely time here in England, everywhere we go there are
collections of people waiting to worship me and some of them look a little
bit like my mum and dad. I have got dad to attach some pictures of my fine
self as I explored this little island, I’ll talk you through them….
On the first day after we arrived we went by train (I like trains!) to
Shoreham By Sea which is on the south coast where my godfather took me to
a real English pub. Love Ira.
(No pix provided of Ira in Pub!)
I’ll keep you posted.
Peace, Beth
October 4, 2010
 While my friend Ira was sleeping in his Moses Basket, (Hat by boysenberry), the other morning we started talking about some of the issues that arise with a new baby in the house. OK so here’s the one we are wondering about: Dad is in the same room as the baby, (doing some adult activity), while mom is in another room, (doing another activity while Dad has agreed to minding the baby while she does said activity). The baby starts to cry, Dad continues with his activity. Mom, hearing the baby cry for a few minutes, goes and gets the baby which she must then immediately breast feed. Dad continues with his activity, Mom is aggravated and says so, after all Dad was supposed to be taking care of the baby so Mom could get something done), but Dad doesn’t seem to understand why Mom is aggravated…I’m guessing that any of you with kids will get this but…the question we asked each other, IRA’s Mom & I, was why do father have a tendency to let the child care revert to Mothers when ever it is not so convenient for them, and why they don’t understand that this is not OK?
Please know that I am not trying to trash Ira’s Dad in anyway, we were just wondering where the disconnect is and beside blaming his mother, which didn’t seem fair, we couldn’t really solve the dilemma before Ira was ready for his next snack!
Your thoughts and comment on this subject are greatly needed!
We love our IRA here at boysenberry, he has lots of out fleece and makes a great model for it, so please check out the site!
September 13, 2010
Ira’s, his Mum Siobhan, (she’s British and calls herself Mum, so I’m going with it), and I walk together mornings. Vermont mornings are getting a little nippy and she’s been wrapping him up in a blanket. He was a bit aggravated today with being wrapped and at eight weeks Siobhan thought it was time for a fleece bunting.
 When they came to the store to pick one out, we had to take pictures.
We put a lot of suits on him because he’s so cute and such a good sport about being dressed. He giggled and cooed, kicked his feet and happily rubbed his face against the softy fleece.
The Penguin Elf Suit was his favorite. He looked right into the camera and smiled as if to say: this is the one ladies!
This style Elf Bunting is on sale right now and there are only a few of them left as sadly the Polartec print is no longer available so if you want your Ira to look snazzy, be cozy, smile and coo, you might want to order one.
Peace, Beth
September 11, 2010
As I’m gearing up for the winter season, saying goodbye to summer and looking forward to the first snow, I was inspired to make a new group baby hats. This one is made from beautiful navy fleece print from Polartec®. I love to play around with color but I decided to resist my usual style of contrasting 2 or 3 colors and keep this one simple, allowing the navy & white print speak for itself.
 When we popped this new style on Ira he was so irresistibly adorable his mother had to stop us and kiss him about 700 times. We couldn’t choose one best shot so here are 4 of my new friend Ira modeling this fun and funky navy snowflake hat. I wonder what he would be saying if he were able to speak for himself…
Peace, Beth
boysenberryvt.com
September 8, 2010
Summer is over, the kids are back in school and it’s time for me to get cracking on new fleece for fall. I’m off to a good start with my new friend Ira. He was born on Bastille day a few weeks ago and his lovely Mum Siobhan has agreed to let us borrow him to model: and a what wonderful model he is! At Ira’s first photo shoot we took over 500 pictures and he was a smiling trooper though it all. He squiggled and cooed, looked right into the camera and snuggled into a few fleece outfits.
He especially loved our new recycled fleece elf bunting,  his favorite being the Apple Green & Purple.
I am so excited to have found some Polartec® fabrics made with fibers using recycling plastic bottles, mostly milk bottles I’m told. This fantastic fabric is the same quality that Polartec® is so well known for. I’m going crazy making up Buntings, Jackets & Pants, and more with these beautiful new colors. Ira & I will be keeping you posted on all the new frocks I’ll be making and his Mum tells me he has opinions about everything: he may just be our new fashion Guru.
Peace, Beth
July 19, 2010
At some point in our childhood, we divided the seven siblings into two sub groups. The Big Kids: Ann, Carol & Scott, and the Little Kids: Laura, Clare & Kristin. Being the 4th and middle child I think I floated between the two, first I was a little but because I was 3 years older then Laura, I became a big at some point.
The Little Kids were little and mostly did little kid stuff. The Big Kids were bigger and they didn’t play Barbies anymore, or participate in our endless rehearsals of musical shows that were never performed, they played sports, babysat and had friends that we didn’t know.
The 3 Big Kids were all born in South Bend Indiana while my father was in college. They knew the Farrington family, who my family still very close to, and who were always a bit of a mystery to me. The Farringtons came to see us one summer when I was about 11 and I think my eyes were popping out of my head the whole time. The house was full of a different kind of energy that week: an echo, I think now, from a time when my parents were still kids themselves. The Farringtons lived on a different level: there was a lot more conflict, drama, activity and noise swirling around them than was normal in our home.
The parents, Alice & Wayne, had a son & 3 beautiful daughters who all had, to my preteen ears, weird nicknames. The girls wore make-up! and short shorts!, they fussed with each other and talked back parents way more than we would have ever been able to get away with. I didn’t really bond with the kids, although I thought they were truly amazing, they were Big Kids and out of my league at the time.
I recall Alice in constant motion, never a dull moment, rarely silent, running the show and doing it well. And today I am thinking particularly about Wayne Farrington, who sadly passed away this week, as a man with a permanent expression of mischief, a gleam in his eye, a little smile, and a certain elfish way he held his head that it seemed to me he was always quietly thinking up his next prank…I don’t really know if the was his personality or not, but that is how I will always remember him.
July 7, 2010
We Frocks lived on a beautiful property which because of a sequence of unfortunate events was sold out from under us one summer. It has become a sort of sacred memory place and we now call The Valley House. A sublime spot for summer play, trees to climb, fields to roam, a creek where we did the usual mud pie making, tadpole, salamander and frog catching and a pond that my dad used to skim the glop off of, (I have no idea why), and sometimes we would fish.
I remember one evening we kids were all out there fishing with Dad and I decided to try some fly fishing with a rod that was basically a stick with some fishing line. What happened was that the hook went flying through the air stuck right into my fathers arm. All the kid chatter stopped, total silence, time stood still, and I had a moment of utter terror, unable to begin to imagine what was going to happen next. Dad, in his typical fashion, simply pulled the hood from his bicep and says to me “That will be enough of that”.
My relief was immeasurable.
To this day I can’t go fishing without remembering that event. Even if it’s just another fish story, sometime the simplest moments become epic in our minds.
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