Blog
March 21st, 2015
I might have a personal preference for autumn, but spring really is the Northwest’s best season. The days are rapidly getting longer, everywhere you look is just bursting with color, and—my favorite part—the season lasts and lasts, for months on end.
I have acres of work before me in the studio, but I can’t help spending part of my days on long walks around my neighborhood—I don’t want to miss a second of all this gorgeous pink.
Today, though, I’m indoors at the Flea Market. So if you’re out on the town today and taking in the blossoms, stroll on down to the Fieldhouse and say hello, won’t you? You’ll bring a breath of spring in the door with you.
March 19th, 2015
First of all, thank you so much for your response to my crazy-long Empire Builder post! Your comments, social media shares, emails, and encouragement have been wonderful—and such a tonic for the nervewracking nature of putting something so personal and complicated into the world. Thank you for that.
Secondly, I was walking around my neighborhood yesterday and I passed this sign—which reminded me that I haven’t mentioned the Flea Market that’s coming up this weekend at the UPS Fieldhouse. The UPS Flea Market has been an annual Tacoma tradition since 1968—and in recent years has been expanded to include artisans and crafters.
(An aside: the new “Fieldhouse Full of Awesome Stuff” title is kind of…um, sort of entirely…all my fault. And it makes me giggle every time I see it in print. My friend Lynn is one of the chairpersons of the market; when they were first considering opening the event to artists, she approached me and Jessica to see if we’d be game to participate. She asked us what we might call the new hybrid event, since “Flea Market” was no longer entirely accurate. We were having just as much trouble describing it as Lynn was, and I just blurted out, “It’s like a whole Fieldhouse full of…AWESOME!” So, yeah. Sorry about that. I wasn’t at my most articulate that day…)
Anyway, Jessica and I will be sharing a booth (#7, on the main floor, if you’re looking for us) again this year, and we’ll each have new goodies (I mean “awesome”) to show you. Here are the details:
47th Annual University of Puget Sound Flea Market
(and Fieldhouse Full of AWESOME)
This Saturday, March 21, 2015
9 am to 4 pm
Regular admission $5 (benefits student scholarships)
NEW THIS YEAR: early-bird admission at the side door, 8:15 am, $10
UPS Fieldhouse
N. 11th St, between Alder and Union, Tacoma, WA
See you on Saturday!
March 12th, 2015
I just got back from over a month of traveling—first by way of a road trip to the bottom of California and back, and immediately afterward, a one-way Florida-to-Washington drive with a friend. In 33 days I logged well over 8,000 miles, and crossed several vastly different regions of the country. So even with the help of my trusty sketchbooks, my memories of the trip aren’t terribly linear. They’re more of a jumble of images flashing through my mind—so in that spirit, here is a similar jumble of images.
Now that I’m back in the studio, I’m trying hard to get my momentum back on my ongoing projects—and to suppress (for a little while, at least) the ideas that are coming as thick and fast as the images in my memory. We’ll see how long I last before some new project (or twelve) comes out of this trip…
February 19th, 2015
Today is the beginning of the lunar new year, and you’ll have to forgive me, because I’m about to get cryptic. (Some day, I hope, I’ll explain.) For everyone out there who doesn’t happen to live in Tacoma: happy Year of the Sheep! You can stop reading now.
And for those Tacomans in the know: remember this image, and happy hunting!
January 6th, 2015
Settling back into things after returning from a holiday trip, and thinking of everything I’d like 2015 to hold. Seems appropriate that today is Epiphany. (Bonus for the day: it’s so balmy I can have my tea on the porch.) Welcome, new year. Welcome, welcome.
December 25th, 2014
To me this season is not about a certain day, or even a series of holidays—it’s a collection of moments. It’s those moments that I cherish above anything else—especially when they happen with the people I love best, in this part of the world I call home. I hope your season, however you might celebrate or mark it, is filled with the moments you’ll want to remember always.
Merry Christmas, and happy holidays, from our home to yours.
December 16th, 2014
Every day this month I’ve brought a stack of packages like this to the post office, fulfilling orders and sending my goods to every corner of the country and beyond. Normally this is the week that the orders taper off, as folks finish off their Christmas list or the holiday USPS deadline looms. This year, though, the orders are still coming in thus far, at an astonishing rate that keeps me busy the whole day, every day.
So I just wanted to pause a moment to say thank you—for your support for what I do, for your support of small and local businesses like mine, and of artisans of every stripe who make their living from what they create. I can’t begin to express what that means to me—except to keep making things, in the hope that it’ll mean something to you, too.
November 27th, 2014
We’re celebrating the holiday at a friend’s house this year—one who, I’m happy to say, was the perfect partner in crime when it came to hatching our crazy state-souvenir table settings idea.
Whatever state you’re in this year (whether literal or metaphorical), wishing you a happy, safe and delicious Thanksgiving!
November 17th, 2014
Slowly but surely, this place is beginning to look like home.
Good thing, because the days are absolutely flying by,
the weeks passing me in a blur of time.
Neither the Tailor nor I could really take any time off from work for our move, so we can only settle in a little at a time. There are so many boxes to unpack, fixtures to mend, hidden spots to clean, surprises to deal with, infrastructure to set up—a million things to build and scrub and fix and dismantle and assemble and purchase and beautify and polish and rewire and dig up and plant and patch and strip and undo and restore and set up just so. Some parts of the house are perfect as they are; others need attention immediately; still others will just need to be lived with as-is for some years, until we can get around to tackling them. If I think about any of it too long, I go a little mad.
So for now, we’re focusing on the corners. There isn’t a single room that’s done yet, but little corners here and there are starting to shape up nicely.
These images, then, are little glimpses of what my days have been like lately, of the moments that have alternately focused and fragmented my attention.
Through it all, work goes on, as close to uninterrupted as I can make it,
while the hum of everyday life picks back up around me.
I’ve gotten in the habit lately of keeping my camera on a shelf behind my work table. It’s a good reminder that while forward momentum is nice—
—I need to remember to stop every now and again and take a good look at where I stand.
October 20th, 2014
We’re all moved into our new house, and fully in the thick of unpacking and setting up our lives again. But despite a pile of work to do that stretches from here to next year, I didn’t want to miss my favorite season. So every chance I get, I’ve been sneaking out to take walks among the autumn colors. And all the while, a snippet of Robert Frost plays on repeat in my head:
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
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