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.