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Crewel embroidery keeps coming back in style

Lifestyle Columns

Some antique arts fade in popularity but are never truly lost. Embroidery is one of them. There are surviving examples of embroidered fabric that date back thousands of years. There is even evidence that Cro-Magnons practiced embroidery! By comparison, the embroidery of 17th and 18th-century Europe and Colonial America seems much more modern. This was the heyday of the craft. It had grown increasingly accessible to amateurs and was established as an important part of women’s education. Queen Mary II, who co-ruled England with her husband William III from 1689 to 1694, was known for ...

Gratitude and thankfulness

Lifestyle Columns

According to the American Heart Association, “expressing gratitude can improve sleep, mood and immunity, can decrease depression, anxiety, chronic pain and disease.” Consistently combining gratitude observation with the performance of acts of thankfulness can help raise your positivity, too. If you want to begin or up your gratitude practice, the New Ulm Public Library has books to help guide and inspire your plan. Here is a list of books—with descriptions from the publishers—to get you started. Gratitude by Oliver Sacks. “Gratitude is Sacks’ meditation on why life ...

A growing Thanksgiving tradition

Lifestyle Feature

NEW ULM — Every year, the Community Friends Thanksgiving Dinner is held in the basement of St. Mary’s Church in New Ulm, with hundreds of guests being served throughout the day. The meal has undergone a few changes during its 36 years of serving the dinner, but the idea has remained the ...

Recent read

Lifestyle Columns

Here are few of my favorite recent reads. Library staff would be happy to help you place requests on these or any other titles. If you’d like to place your own request, visit www.newulmlibrary.org and choose Library Catalog. Billy Barringer disappeared while camping in Ethan Marsh’s backyard when they were both ten years old. Ethan still dreams of that night, including the sccrrriiiiiiiiitch noise as the tent’s side was slashed. Did someone take Billy or did he wander away on his own? What about the mysterious camouflaged man who was seen in the neighborhood that same week? Or ...

Warm hands, hearts and lemon drops

Lifestyle Feature

NEW ULM — How does one get lemon drops out of cotton bags full of corn? That question can be answered by Gwen Mack, aka the lemon drop lady. The lemon drop lady is not a super hero per se, but one could easily consider Mack one with her selfless efforts to give back to patients with ...