Hi Hazelnuts! Crystal here. I can’t believe it’s already March. It’s even more unbelievable that it’s been officially a year since we had to shut down production in our little Brooklyn workshop and move to working remotely. And what a year it’s been! Over here in production, we’ve gotten into a fairly smooth system all things considered. Our overseas workshops are up and running (with COVID protocols in place) and thanks to you Nootz, we’ve even on-boarded a new workshop in Lima, Peru and added 7 full time artisans to our team in Nepal. We are so grateful to be able to provide employment to so many people during these hard times.

Training new artisans remotely has really been a huge challenge! When you make things the way we do, with humans doing all the work, mistakes are bound to happen. Add to that, the fact that we can’t visit in person and how many members of the team are new or working remotely… and well, the mistakes get a little more comical.

Earlier this month our team in Nepal reached out with some wonderful news. They had accidentally attached bunny ears to a small batch of tan mice. Bunny eared Annicke?! Yes please!

They shared that they had not caught the mistake until the mice were already finished, and asked if we might be able to find use for them. Usually, we allow them to sell some of these production mistakes in their factory shop in Kathmandu, but since that has now closed due to COVID, we don’t want to burden our artisan friends with products they can’t sell or ship…. so we said send them on over! And yes, they are as cute as they sound.

The very same week we received some linen dresses from our workshop in Cambodia. Did you know that color can change significantly depending on what light you review it under? In normal times, we receive a fabric swatch for color approval before going into production and we check it against various light sources (it’s called lab-dipping).  But COVID has made us have to make approvals over photo or zoom! Sometimes a color can be flare differently in daylight and incandescent light … and well, I had approved a swatch for a re-order of linen dresses meant for our program with Pottery Barn and when they arrived, they looked nothing like the color we were actually trying to match - we make mistakes here in New York too! And what a lovely sage green mistake these dresses are!

We wanted to give you Hazelnuts a chance to purchase these happy mistakes for your collections.

Bunny ear Annicke’s are only $34 and the dresses are $6 – we will never see either one of these again! Our mistakes are your gain!

A side by side of the bunny-eared Annicke Mouse (left) and our current Annicke Mouse (right)

If you are interested in one of these tan bunny-mice or a linen dress, sign up for a chance to purchase through this raffle here.

Thank you, Hazelnuts!