i've moved!

same me, same missives, new web address.

please update your rss feeds, bookmarks, rolodex, blackberries, blueberries and mental/mnemonic filing systems.

cosmo, jimmy & maude

i love that my craft is moving forward of its own volition. while i'm living my life/watching the clouds go by someone will find me and say, "i'd like you to make me a squirrel" or "i'd like two cats that are hugging".

to which my answer always is, "of course!". and i set to my good work with joy and jolly gumption.

whale making, a process.

i've been having a little creative boom over here. that's how it happens, it would seem, with the cycle of my creativity. there will be periods of inactivity which i like to think of as brainstorming sessions or inspiration searches or any other positive way to describe the time when i have plans to make things, but do not. i could be doodling, i could be writing ideas down on scraps of paper, journals or the chalkboard door in the kitchen or i could be spending all my extra time practicing my headstand and contemplating the transformative power of naps. sometimes things are related and sometimes they are not.

this past week i finished a giant whale body pillow, a little squirrel with scarf, and a set of 4 animals cards i made for a silent auction fundraiser so relatively speaking, i'm experiencing a bit of a creative upswing. everything i come across i wonder how i could interpret creatively. last nights dinner conversation about hyenas turned into this mornings doodle session to perfect their sneaky, slinky hump. it's sunnier outside. the birds are extra noisy. my swatches of wool and tweed no longer look like inanimate fabric, but part of something i've yet to discern.

there's always a moment when i'm deep in the mode of creating where the thing that i am making becomes something of its own accord. not, i would say, completely and altogether different from the blueprint i'd imagined, but just, its own thing. like i am less a creator and more an assistant in its ultimate desire to be whatever it is that it will be. i am making a whale and in return the whale is teaching me things like not everything can be planned and you never know how something will truly turn out until you get there.

zen moments in crafting and life lessons from whale body pillows. i ride the creativity with glee and try not to worry about when it will inevitably come to the necessary lull of the cycle. and anyways, i always need more time to practice naps and headstands.

the mini manufacture of things handmade

baby barn owl with scarf

this little pip is a custom order. i wrapped her scarf twice for fashion and the late december wind.

she doesn't have a name yet. she needs some time to develop traits and a fine personality.

the holidays are here!! even though i have a holiday cold, i'll take one of those with jeremy and some tea over any other option out there.

zen lessons in crafting

i fell in love with the bear i made. the first one with the tartan scarf.

i loved him so much i'd look at the cut out shapes of the second bear and think it's just not fair, that he should have to follow in such well loved footprints.


but i made him anyways cause he was halfway there and i chose him the nicest fabric for his scarf. i made it long and wrapped it around his neck twice, a burnt orange swatch of warm and wool.

then i caught him staring out the window in this melancholy way like he was both the youngest and the oldest living thing and i remembered my ability to love in myriad ways.

big black bear

i made this handsome fellow for a custom order for a special lady. ain't he swell? i love his scarf and his furrowed brow.

soon it will be time for the long trek north but for now he's hanging out on our mantle, looking pensively down at the floor, wondering when it's time for breakfast.

claude and richard say goodbye.

upon hearing of claude's impending departure, richard felt it necessary to impart some whale wisdom. he was surprised then, to learn that claude had some wisdom of his own.

"see the world," said richard, "the one out there? it's big, claude. big and full of possibilities"

"i know richard", said claude, "but in all the world there's no other you"

moe moves abroad.

one last look out the window before it's time to leave for switzerland!

travelling by mail it's important to have all your paperwork in order.

moe wonders if he shouldn't have removed his tam for the passport photo. concluding he looks stately, he dismisses the thought.

time to prepare the care package. will a turtle snack keep in the mail?

goodbye, moe! don't forget your manners and your good breeding.

i dream of darwin (and the dream came true)

something wonderful has happened. something i started thinking about almost a year ago when i woke up from the kind of dream that pinches your backbone in a playful but pushy kind of way.

i had imagined myself a business.


i'd make animals out of second hand clothes, some small, some big, and i'd sell them online in a shop i'd call 'i Dream of Darwin'. everything would be inspired by nature, as an homage to how nature inspires me. i'd make stories about the animals to please my writing bone and i'd kiss them each, one time, square on the nose which is the thing that's missing from machine manufactured stuffs and will never once be missing from mine.

and last weekend, my shop opened!


many things inspired me to make this happen, a purchase i made on etsy, a dear friend at work i'd confided in early on, my best friend, my husband, my idle hands itching for some purpose. my younger self sitting in my memory, making robots out of wood and three legged dogs out of my mom's expensive fabric.

and perhaps the biggest inspiration was a desire for a handmade dialogue with the universe, for a connection to be forged with the things that i create and the place that they end up. me to you and something stitched between.


it took a year for many reasons, i had a plan mapped out at first but the organized manner of it felt funny to me. i wanted to enjoy all the steps including the beginning and pushing it forward according to a timeline felt like a cousin to the office job and a stranger to the creative process. i wanted to explore. try different things. watch as a style emerged, then make attempts that went against it.

i wanted to covet all my creations.

for a while i was striving for completion - i needed more things made, i needed large numbers of inventory, i needed to land on one style and unify everything into a packaged, clever little bow. realizing now that an end point will hopefully never come, i've based my shop on a philosophy of creation and exploration and an active, present engagement with my world and my way to explore it - through pieces unique, handmade and inspired by the natural world.


i hope you like it! i hope it speaks to you! i hope it inspires you to do something weird of your own and i hope you pass it on to your network of dreamers, the friends who'd most appreciate a hand-made narwhal in their lives.

isn't that just all of us? cleverly disguised under adult clothing? i had a dream it might be so.

i'm starting my own company

and i'm telling you and the universe as a kind of announcement. it has a name that dear friends already know and a few items almost ready for sale and the skeleton of some rather good idea bones.

i daydream about it.


when the thought struck me as a piece of sky that fell, i met it with such gusto. this was it! that thing you do all your life for fun anyways and then one moment realize when your head is turned that it's the work you should be doing. i went to goodwill and bought tweed jackets. i sketched shapes and beaks and french berets. i sewed a few animals to start. some had handkerchiefs.



i can't tell you when my wee shop will open, (only that it will), and i couldn't say for sure all the things i'll have to sell but i can tell you that i'm going to love creating stuff and collecting stuff and thinking about all the ways i can package the stuff up with thoughtful intent before sending it out in the world.

(by parcel and priority post!).