Well hello there and welcome to my little corner! I'm Peggy, though everybody at church and most of the county calls me Aunt Peggy, because I have eleven nieces and nephews and at some point it just stuck. I've been crafting since my mother put a needle in my hand in 1959, and selling at church bazaars since 1971, when I sold four crocheted potholders for a quarter apiece and thought I'd gone into business. I'm sixty-one, retired from the school cafeteria, widowed since '96, and this computer was a Christmas present from my son who lives in Minneapolis and got tired of me saying "what's the Internet." Now I know, and he can't get me off it.

This page is for anybody who likes to make things with their hands, and especially for the ladies (and a few gentlemen) who sell at the bazaars, because I've learned a thing or two about that in twenty-eight years and there's no sense keeping it to myself. Pour yourself a coffee. This page is long, like me on the phone.

Counted cross-stitch is the easiest needlework there is, and I'll fight anyone who says otherwise. It's just little X's. If you can count, you can do it. Here's what you need to start.

• Aida cloth. This is a stiff cotton woven in little squares with obvious holes at the corners, so you don't have to guess where the needle goes. It comes in "counts," which is squares per inch: 11-count is big and good for beginners and kids, 14-count is what most patterns are written for and what I use nine times out of ten, and 18-count is small and fine and hard on the eyes after fifty. White or ecru to start.
• Embroidery floss. Six-strand cotton floss, sold in little skeins for about a quarter or thirty cents apiece in every color God made and some He didn't. You separate the strands and use two for 14-count (three for 11-count, one or two for 18-count). Pull them apart one at a time and put them back together; it lays flatter.
• A tapestry needle, size 24 for 14-count. It has a blunt tip so it goes through the holes instead of through the threads, and a big eye.
• A hoop, 4 or 6 inches, to keep the cloth taut. Take it off when you put the work down or it leaves a ring.
• Small scissors, the little stork ones if you want to feel fancy.

How to start: Find the center of the cloth by folding it in half both ways and creasing; the center of the pattern is usually marked with arrows. Start there and work outward, and you'll never run off the edge. Don't knot your thread on the back (it makes a lump when it's framed). Instead, leave a tail an inch long on the back and catch it under your first few stitches.

The stitch: Come up in the bottom left hole of a square, go down in the top right. That's a half stitch, like a /. Come up in the bottom right, down in the top left, and that's your X. You can do a row of half stitches across and then come back over them to finish the X's, which is faster. The one rule that matters: every top stitch in the whole piece goes the same direction. It doesn't matter which direction. It matters that it's the same. That's the difference between a piece that looks smooth and one that looks like it was done in the dark.

Finishing: Wash the finished piece gently in cool water with a little mild soap, roll it in a towel, and press it face down on a thick towel while it's still damp so the stitches don't get squashed. Then frame it, or make it into an ornament, a bookmark, a pincushion, a card, or the top of a jelly jar, which is what sells at bazaars.

This is one of mine, and you have my permission to stitch it, give it away or sell it at your own bazaar. All I ask is you don't sell the pattern. It's 17 stitches wide by 19 tall, so on 14-count it's about an inch and a quarter by an inch and a half, perfect for an ornament, a jar lid or a card. I do it on a 4-inch square of Aida. Each letter is one stitch; a period is an empty square (bare cloth).

Peggy's notes: If you want to be fancy, backstitch around the door and windows in dark brown with one strand, and put a French knot in yellow for a doorknob. For Christmas, stitch the roof in white for snow and the hearts in red and green. I make a dozen of these on a rainy Saturday and they're gone by noon at the first bazaar, on a jar lid over a jar of my apple butter, $5. (If you can't make out the grid on your screen, print the page. It lines up on paper, I checked.)

Costs pennies, keeps kids busy for an afternoon, and sells all December. This is the recipe I've used since my own children were small.

1. Mix the flour and salt in a big bowl. Add the water a bit at a time and stir, then knead on the counter for a good 5 to 10 minutes until it's smooth and not sticky. If it's crumbly, wet your hands; if it's sticky, dust with flour.
2. Roll it out about a quarter inch thick. Thinner cracks; thicker takes forever to dry.
3. Cut with cookie cutters (stars, hearts, gingerbread men, whatever you've got). Use a drinking straw to poke a hole at the top for the ribbon before baking. Everybody forgets this once.
4. Bake on a cookie sheet at 250 degrees F for 2 hours or more, turning once, until they're hard all the way through and sound like a cracker when you tap them. Big thick ones can take 3 or 4 hours. Low and slow; if the oven's too hot they puff up and crack. Or just let them air-dry on a rack for two or three days, turning them.
5. Let them cool completely. Paint with acrylic craft paints (the little bottles at the craft store), let dry, and then seal them, both sides, with a clear acrylic sealer or varnish, or they'll pick up moisture and go soft on you. Thread a ribbon through the hole.

Tips: A tablespoon of cinnamon in the dough smells wonderful and gives them a nice brown color even before you paint. Press a hand print into a big circle for grandparents; those sell like hotcakes with the year written on the back. And don't let the dog near them, they're salty and he'll eat them, ask me how I know.

Here's where you'll find me and my folding tables this fall, Lord willing and the van starts. If you come, say you saw the page and I'll throw in a bookmark.

If your church has a bazaar between now and Christmas and needs a vendor, write me. I'm booked the weekends above but I've got a couple of Sundays open and I don't mind a drive.

The number one mistake I see at every bazaar is a lovely lady selling a cross-stitched pillow that took her forty hours for six dollars, because "it's for the church." Honey, the church gets the table fee. You get to price your work like it's worth something, because it is. Here's how I do it.

1. Know what it cost you. Write down the materials for one item, all of them, including the ribbon and the jar. Most of my things cost between fifty cents and two dollars to make.
2. Materials times three is the old rule, and it's not a bad one for quick things like ornaments. For something that takes real hours, add something for your time, even if it's only a few dollars an hour. It won't be what you're worth. It's the principle.
3. Price in round numbers. $3, $5, $10, $15. Nobody at a church bazaar wants to make change for $4.75, least of all you, with a line and cold hands. I keep everything at four price points and I put the price on a little tag so people don't have to ask, because half of them won't ask, they'll just walk.
4. Have something at every price. A dollar table for the kids (bookmarks, single ornaments), a $5 table for the "I need a little something" crowd, and a few $15 to $25 pieces for the ones who came to buy a present. The dollar table pays your gas; the $5 table pays the day.
5. Don't price it low because you're shy. If it sells out by ten o'clock you priced it too low. If nothing sells all day, it's usually not the price, it's the table: raise things up on boxes under a cloth so people can see them, put the prettiest thing at eye level, and smile. Say hello to every single person who slows down.
6. Bring change. Forty dollars in ones and fives and a roll of quarters. Every year somebody next to me has to send her husband to the gas station.
7. About sales tax: ask your church what they do. Some collect it for the whole bazaar, some leave it to you, and the rules are different in every state. Don't guess; ask. (My son the accountant made me put this in.)

Last thing. Write down what you sold and what you didn't, every bazaar, in a notebook. After two seasons you'll know exactly what to make and how much, and you'll stop hauling home a box of things nobody wanted. My notebook goes back to 1983. It says nobody wants crocheted toilet paper covers anymore. The notebook is right.

When my son moved out for good in 1990 I waited exactly one week and then moved the sewing machine into his room, and it has been the craft room ever since. He knows. He's fine.

What's in it: the sewing machine, my mother's, which is older than I am and runs better. A card table for the salt dough and the glue, covered in newspaper permanently. A bookshelf of pattern leaflets and magazines going back to the seventies, which my daughter says is "a fire hazard" and I say is "a library." Floss in three of those plastic drawer cabinets from the hardware store, sorted by number, because if it's not sorted by number you'll buy the same color four times, and I have. A lamp with a magnifying glass on it, which I resisted for years and now can't live without. The good scissors, which nobody else in this house is allowed to touch, and the paper scissors, which they can have. A radio. The dog's bed, because he supervises. And on the wall, the first cross-stitch I ever finished, a crooked little sampler from 1960 that says PEGGY AGE 8 with the G's backwards. I keep it there to remind myself that everybody starts somewhere, and that nobody in my family was going to tell me the G's were backwards.

Photos of the room and of some of my pieces are coming as soon as I figure out the scanner my son sent. So far I have scanned my hand. It came out fine.