Simple yarn bowl looking for fibre artist. Must love yarn and spending time together. Don’t mind Netflix, TV, podcasts, or music as long as we can be close. If interested, meet me at the Edmonton Fibre Frolic at Chasing Fire Studio booth, and we can start our future together.
August is our quiet time in the studio. The studio is left lonely as we spend time in the wilds, soaking up the prairie and mountain sun to catch each fleeting moment of summer. Now, we have fully immersed in September. Show season begins! The kiln is firing at least once a week. Buttons are zipping into bags, mugs are rolling out of slabs, and yarn bowls are spinning off of the wheel. Wee little animals are appearing to decorate our shelves and we call in help to fill the studio with laughter. This season, we are scheduled to appear in Calgary twice, and Sea Turtle Fibre Arts will have some of our beauties at Knit City this coming weekend! Sept 30-Oct 1 in Vancouver, Sarah will have mugs and our NEW GIANT mugs at her booth Sea Turtle Fibre Arts in lovely squishy yarn kits! Knit her luscious yarn while enjoying your favourite beverage of choice from our mugs. F#CK OFF I’m Knitting Regular size and HUGE mugs in kits at Sea Turtle Fibre Arts Booth Sep 30 – Oct 1, 2017 The PNE Forum, Vancouver Shindig is coming! The Fall Shindig is October 21 and the party starts at 10am on October 21. Get there before 5. We’ll have the new HUGE mug sizes available, as well as more DRAGON yarn bowls. The Calgary Fibre Arts Fair is bigger and better this year! Come visit us at the new digs at Stampede Park in the Big Four on Nov 3 & 4 from 9am-5pm. Bring your projects to match buttons. It’s going to be a wonderful autumn season!
Stampede Maker Market prep continues… Yarn bowl with flowers and I don’t even know if this is leaving my house ever. Another yarn bowl is now in progress where I’m loving texture plates. Pebbles, yes!
Leah at Travel Taste Create is featuring artists during her “Let me introduce you” series. I’m so excited and very honoured to be a featured artist! Her assignment for me really made me think: What are my influences? Why do I make what I make? Do I have a philosophy around my own art? Please go take a read – I explain why I can’t stop making buttons and mugs, and how you inspire my work. Travel. Taste. Create.
Jason is busy packing up a herd of sheep and hand carved yarn bowls to accompany all of the buttons, bookmarks, and diz for tomorrow’s sale. We’ll be at the Fibre Shindig Hillhurst Sunnyside Community Centre from 10am-5pm with so many wonderful vendors! We will be joined by vendors selling their handdyed yarns, spindles, roving, and all the accessories and fabulousness that you could ever want or need.
Fresh from the kiln: I want to keep these mugs! I love exploring new techniques, especially when they yield such lovely results.
Ceramics is about timing: is my ware wet enough or dry enough for whatever stage that I’m at? Tonight I pulled handles, then trimmed mugs while the handles dried, then worked with another set of eight mugs, and then… nope, the timing didn’t work this time. These pulled handles aren’t dry enough to attach to mugs so they’re heading into time-out under plastic. The handles and the mugs need to be at very similar stages of dampness so that the handles just don’t crack and fall off. You’d think that in this dry Alberta climate, they would have stiffened up in all that time but nope, still floppy and far too annoying to work with. It’s too close to bedtime and I need to get my beauty rest – I like my handles just a wee bit closer to leather, thank you very much. Now I will hope that they don’t dry too much under the plastic because I won’t be able to pay them any attention until tomorrow night. With ten mugs waiting for handles, I sure hope the mugs stay wet enough while the handles stiffen just a wee bit so that the timing works perfectly.
Celtic Hounds, knots, angel wings to make your favourite comfort drink that much more comforting. We have sets of each and they’ll be with us in Riverbend tomorrow, looking for new loving homes! They make wonderful gifts for the tea and coffee lovers on your list.
I came home last night to a man with a dilemma. He had 18 mugs without handles, and also had a long list of not unimportant things that needed to be done before Wednesday morning. I happen to like pulling handles so he made supper, gave me a hand massage, helped the Kid with his homework, and I pulled handles and attached them to his mugs while watching old episodes of Downton Abbey. I think I got the better end of the deal. The keys to a happy marriage and successful pottery: creativity, compromise, and flexibility.
The kiln is firing up Jason’s two newest styles in his whiskey tumbler series. His pointed knots series disappeared in a day, and now his take on a celtic knot, and a firebird for this kiln run are sure to be popular as well. He’s cooked up some really interesting glaze combinations for these once they come out of their bisque firing. Sneak peeks? Of course! I caught a couple of quick photos before we loaded the kiln. I’m so excited to see them once they are glazed. They are so perfectly balanced and I can’t wait to see them finished!
The original pointed knot whiskey tumblers. The curved back is shaped to be balanced in your hand, and the smooth ceramic keeps your whiskey on ice perfectly chilled. These are also lovely for non-alcoholic drinks, of course. They make every drink a stylish drink. We have only two of these ceramic whiskey tumblers left, and I’ll be bringing them on October 17 to the Fibre Shindig at the Hillhurst/Sunnyside Community Hall in Calgary. They are dishwasher and microwave safe. I’m trying to convince Jason to make more of these because I adore them so much. Should he make more? Let him know in the comments!
We get by with a little help from our friends. In this case, it is my niece (and an artist in her own right) Jill Reynaud at the button table with me. Her eye for texture makes it easier for me to accept help, and she didn’t even flinch when I used the term “aggressively sponge”. I am a control freak when it comes to accepting help in the studio, and up until now my Mom, with a lifetime of artistry under her belt, had been the only other to touch the buttons. There are many that have offered and I’ve always declined because quality control is my #1 priority, and I don’t want to offend helpers by harping at them to “do it my way”. I need for ceramic buttons, diz, pendants, and everything else coming out of the studio to have smooth edges so they never catch or cut yarn. Smoothing every edge and hole is incredibly time intensive, but I personally feel that the final product quality is worth it. With two fibre shows coming up, and custom orders waiting for my attention, getting some help is the only way to get clay beauties into everyone’s hands. The clay gods heard my cries, and Jill arrived, eager to jump in. And I don’t offend her (or if I do, she just smiles and keeps making beautiful things) Thank you, Jill!
Spring cleaning started early on this website, and welcome to the new site design! I’m working out some interesting bugs (where did those photos from 2011 disappear to??) however I’m happy to have a responsive, stable website with usability across platforms. The biggest bonus for me is the additional new ease to post photos and ideas. Bye bye, grey unresponsive site. You were lovely but if users can’t navigate from mobile devices, you’re outta here. Helloooo purple!