never neverland

Well, it's the week between Christmas and New Year's and it feels like Neverland. A place where there is lots of time to sleep in, visit with friends and suspend all concerns until we've passed January 1st. I am still on PEI for the holidays but will be back in my studio on January 5th. All the best for a happy new year!

home

Damien and I are heading home to PEI tomorrow for the next two weeks or so. Depending on the weather tomorrow morning of course (it sounds like there's a winter storm a-brewing). Christmas vacation! Good friends, close family, good food, good drink and cozy times. A much needed massage and some yoga. And then it will be the new year. Amazing.

filling up the store

I am finally getting around to photographing my scarves and getting them up on my Etsy shop. I'll be adding more daily as time allows, so keep checking in! The photo above is of my Wave scarf in Winter Dusk, and below is the view out my kitchen window last evening as the sun was setting.....

toronto trades

Despite not doing as well as I had hoped at the One of a Kind Show, one of the wonderful things about craft fairs is the trading that happens between artists. Usually I am very self-disciplined and rarely let myself make a purchase, let alone a trade until the last day. This year's One of a Kind was no exception, and the trades that I did make deserve attention.

My little neighborhood of booths was fantastic this year. Great people, great conversations, helping keep each other sane during the marathon 11 days. Directly across from me was the Raging Bowl Pottery, functional ceramics made by two potters, Dan and Melissa. Lovely lovely people and beautiful work. I traded a scarf for three of their "tumbly tumblers", perfect little cups with rounded bottoms that allow you to literally spin your cup to mix your drink. And they feel so nice in your hand...they've already been tested with a couple of celebratory gin and sodas.

My second trade was a big one. In my few chances to wander around the show, I found Jack and Marjorie bags. Made from recycled military surplus, these are understated and luxurious bags. Simple, functional, well made and beautiful - there was one bag in particular that I couldn't get out of my mind for a couple of days. And with a price tag that was higher than what I could ever afford, I just went to visit it on occasion. But, on the last Saturday of the show, a man came to my booth before opening and was asking me about my scarves and how he wanted to send one to his mother in Germany for Christmas. After talking with him for a few minutes, I noticed his name tag said he was Manuel from Jack and Marjorie. I told him I loved his bags, and we left it at that, saying we would talk again about the scarf. After thinking about it for maybe 5 minutes, I walked over to his booth and proposed a trade. And on Sunday, I traded two scarves for my Jarvis bag. One bag was for Megan, one half of the the couple that make the bags and the other was for Manuel's mother. Very sweet people and a wonderful little company that has an aesthetic that I aspire to. And they told me that they had actually been checking out my scarves on-line before the show. Big compliment!


The third thing I got at One of a Kind wasn't actually a trade. I bought a little button from Jenna Rose of flying Canada geese printed on cloth. Jenna was a couple of years behind me at NSCAD Textiles and has gone on to great success in her textile design - her work is constantly featured in Canadian magazines. Lots of great NSCAD Textiles alum success stories.....

moving slow

I meant to have taken photos of all my scarves and to have had them up in my Etsy shop by now. But I am moving a little slow. As you can see in the sidebar at the right, I only have to listed at the moment. I have many many more! I guess I've been taking my time and recovering from a busy month - enjoying catching up on sleep instead of photographing inventory. I promise to take a running start and fill up my shop over the next week.......

to toronto and home again

I got back from two weeks at the Toronto One of a Kind Show on Tuesday afternoon. The longest Christmas retail show I've ever done. 11 days, 11 hours a day (except for Sundays, which were only 8 hours).
Lots of it was great: meeting customers and fellow weavers who are so appreciative of my work, meeting other exhibitors in my little neighborhood of the show (wonderful group of people that I need to stay in touch with), spending some time with old friends, watching the amazing abundance of people that is Toronto, and all the stimulation of a big show that prompts growth and excitement about the direction of Marshall Arts. Some of it was exhausting: being in a large exhibition hall with no natural light for 11 hours a day, the long transit trips to and from the show everyday (especially the night-time ones at the end of a long day), the roller coaster of having high and low sales days, and the incessant stream of humanity.

My booth changed a lot from the beginning of the show until the end. I had to keep re-arranging my scarves, removing ladders and tiers of dowels, as my scarves got thin on the racks. I sold a bit more than two thirds of my stock. Sadly, in my rush to take down my booth, I forgot to take a very last picture on the last night when I had only two or three scarves on each rack....it was a pretty drastic transformation!

So, now I am home again, enjoying relaxing and puttering. Damien's Intermediate Sclupture class had a group exhibition the night I got back - a great way to return home again.

I have a few custom orders to get done before Christmas, and I need to get my Etsy shop back up and running by the weekend. I'm also enjoying re-organizing our home for the winter and doing some tidying up after a few months of neglect while Damien and I have both been very busy. Home again home again jiggidy jog. The past month feels like a blur......