Genny & Juniper
~ The Nettle Patch Faeries ~
Do not be too cross the next time you’re wandering through the woods and you stumble unwittingly into the blistering kiss of the stinging nettle. They’re considered by some to be quite lucky. In Celtic lore nettles mean faeries are nearby, and the nettle’s sting is said to offer protection from their mischief.
Genny and Juniper are not up to any faerie tricks but they do tend their nettle gardens with love and care, and if you happen by their home in early spring, right as the young nettle shoots are cropping up, they may invite you in for a delicious bowl of stinging nettle soup.
Or Juniper might offer you a cup of steaming nettle tea and while you sit and sip below the towering old maple where they live she may even tell you her favourite tale about the wild swans. Of how a princess’s eleven brothers are turned into swans by their wicked stepmother, and how the sweet princess is helped by a kindly faerie who tells her that if she gathers nettles and spins their fibres into a prickly green yarn and knits the yarn into a coat for each of her swan brothers, without ever speaking a word, the spell will be broken. It is a wonderful story, so I will not tell you any more, but hopefully you’ll hear it someday told beneath the old maple.
Juniper is a collector of stories and is forever pleading with Genny to tell her more. Some days they spend entire afternoons lounging on toadstools and spinning tales of magic and adventure. Juniper always loves to hear of how a good faerie saves the hero or heroine through her wisdom and kindness.
Genny & Juniper will be in the shop tonight at 7PM PDT 🌿
This piece is one of a kind and not intended for play. Genny & Juniper are stitched in place on their toadstool garden. They are entirely hand stitched from natural fibres with the exception of their wings. Genny is dressed in a mix of antique lace and hand dyed cotton. Her hair is made from hand dyed wool locks. Juniper is dressed in hand dyed vintage hankies and antique lace. Both are wearing wool felt caps. The entire piece stands 13” high. The toadstool garden is needle felted and Genny is carrying a stock of felted nettles in her little satchel.