They Sold the Ground Out From Under Her
“They sold the ground out from under me. I’ve got weeks, not months.” — Why a 74-year-old Kentucky crocheter is letting her last handmade pumpkin coasters go at 47% off before the workshop comes down.
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The sale notice went up on the door of the old Fenwick building in July. One sheet of paper, taped crooked, addressed to no one in particular. It gave every tenant on the block the same date to be out: November 1. Then the building comes down.
For thirty-four autumns, Della Merrick has crocheted her pumpkins in a rented back room of that building — a former feed-and-dry-goods store on the edge of Berea, Kentucky. This fall she is crocheting them with the boxes already stacking up around her. When the room is gone, there will not be another one.
“They sold the ground out from under me,” she says, not looking up from the hook. “I’ve got weeks, not months.”
The little pumpkin that never left the table
You do not notice a coaster until it’s too late — until a cold glass has sat on bare wood for four minutes and left a white ring on the good table that never quite comes off. Della noticed early. Sixty years ago, as a young wife, she watched her husband Roy set a sweating glass of tea down on her grandmother’s table and she winced.
The store-bought answer has always been the same sad thing: a slick cork disc that slides out from under the glass, or a plastic square that just moves the puddle around and looks like a hockey puck doing it. None of them last. None of them mean anything.
So in 1979, with a slow October and a leftover ball of pumpkin-orange cotton, Della crocheted a fat little ribbed round and slid it under Roy’s coffee mug “so it’d quit ringing my good table.” Roy turned it over in his hand and said it was the prettiest coaster in Madison County. She made a few more. Then a whole batch, every fall, for forty-odd years.
Fifty years of the same stitch, in a room a stranger bought over the phone
Berea calls itself the Folk Arts and Crafts Capital of Kentucky, and it earns it — the fair on the college square has run longer than anyone can remember, and half the porches on Della’s road still have a rocker and a bowl of yarn. Della learned to crochet at eight, in her grandmother’s lap on a church prayer-shawl line, Kentucky women making warmth for people they would never meet.
She crocheted afghans, dishcloths and baby booties for sixty years. When the church bazaar and the fair started asking for her pumpkins, she took the room at Fenwick’s — cheap rent, tall north windows, and space for the long plank table Roy built her, worn pale where her forearms rest. She never once ran it as a business. She mostly gave the pumpkins away. Roy passed in 2019; the coasters kept coming every fall. It was the thing she did while the kettle heated.
This summer, an out-of-town buyer bought the entire Fenwick block over the phone. Every maker on the row got the same letter Della did. Thirty-four years, ended by a sheet of paper.
“To them it’s a parcel number. To me it’s every autumn I’ve got.”
What makes Della’s coasters different
Set one of hers next to a store coaster and you can feel the difference before you can name it. There are reasons for that — four decades of them.
Why one of Della’s outlasts a drawer full of store-bought
The Thirsty-Cotton Weave. Real cotton yarn actually wicks the condensation off a cold glass and holds it in the weave — so the sweat never runs down onto the wood. Cork and plastic just push the puddle to the edge.
The Full-Round Build. Each coaster is worked in one continuous tight spiral, double-thick. That’s why it lies dead flat and stays flat — no curling corners, no glued backing to peel away in the wash.
The Ridged Round. The raised crochet ridges are worked right into the disc, not printed on. They can’t crack, peel or fade off in a year the way a printed pattern does. They’re part of the cloth.
The Hand-Set Stem. Every stem is shaped by hand from felt and jute twine and stitched down at the top edge — a little pumpkin accent on a flat round coaster, not a printed-on shape.
The Madison County Finish. Hand-washable, colorfast, and built to last decades. Families bring them out every fall like ornaments — the same eight coasters, October after October.
They come as a set of eight, every one in the same warm pumpkin orange she started with back in 1979 — enough to cover a whole table, or a whole family’s worth of mugs, at once. And because every one is crocheted by hand, no two are exactly alike.
“I made them to be used”
There is a funny thing that happens with the pretty ones, Della says. People are almost afraid to use them. She shakes her head at that.
“An afghan of mine sat in a lady’s closet for years because it was ‘too nice,’” she says. “That’s the saddest thing I can think of. I made these to be used. A pretty little pumpkin under your cup, all fall long — that’s the whole point of them.”
This is everything that’s left
Della is not bitter about the room and she does not want anyone’s pity. She had thirty-four good autumns at that window. But she is honest about what the last one feels like: crocheting as fast as her hands allow while the boxes go up around the table, knowing there is no room waiting on the other side of November.
Because the pumpkins are an autumn craft — she only ever makes them in September and October — this batch is simply the last batch. When it’s gone, it’s gone. There is just over three hundred sets left of the final collection, and no way on earth to make more.
“Last fall that room was full of yarn. This fall it’s full of boxes.”
Why she’s letting them go for so little
A boutique in Lexington once offered to take a dozen at thirty-eight dollars apiece. Della said no — that wasn’t who they were for. Her granddaughter Callie, 23, who grew up doing her homework at that long table with a pumpkin coaster under her milk, is the one who set up the little online shop, photographed every set on the porch rail, and finally put a price on them at all.
They kept it deliberately low — $29 a set, 47% off the $55 a shop like that would have put on the tag — for a plain reason. With weeks left and nowhere to store anything, Della would rather every last set end up under somebody’s cider mug this October than boxed in an attic after the doors close.
“I don’t want much for them,” she says. “I want them on real tables. That’s all.”
While the final sets last — the room closes November 1:
See the last setsSet of 8 · $55 now just $29 · check availability →
What people are saying about Della’s pumpkins
“I nearly talked myself out of these — I already had coasters. They arrived on a Thursday and by Sunday they’d taken over the kitchen table. My husband won’t use anything else now.”
Carol Ann D., 63 · Chattanooga, TN
“My mother kept one of this woman’s afghans for twenty years. The morning I read about the coasters I ordered two sets — one for me, one for my sister. They’re even prettier in person.”
Deborah M., 59 · Tulsa, OK
“It genuinely bothers me that a developer can wipe out thirty-four years of a woman’s work with a phone call. I bought a set so a little of it lives on my table. It does the job, too — not one water ring all fall.”
Theresa L., 66 · Athens, GA
Where to get a set of Della’s coasters
Where can I buy them?
Only here, through the shop Callie set up. They are not sold on Amazon, Temu or in any store — if you see them listed elsewhere, they aren’t Della’s.
How long will they be available?
Only while the final collection lasts. There is just over three hundred sets left and more than half have already shipped. Once the room closes on November 1, no more can be made.
What if I’m not happy with them?
There’s a 90-day, no-questions-asked money-back guarantee — Della’s parting gift to her readers. If a set isn’t right for your table, send it back for a full refund. One email is all it takes.
These should only go home with people who’ll be glad to have them there.
Check availabilityLimited quantity · set of 8 · $55 just $29 · 90-day guarantee
“I ordered them for the way they looked. I kept raving about them because they actually work — a glass of ice water sat on one for an hour and the table underneath was bone dry.”
Diane V., 61 · Bloomington, IN
“Every single visitor picks one up and asks where it came from. My granddaughter has named them all. It’s the coziest thing on my table every fall.”
Gail R., 68 · Springfield, MO
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