Weekly-ish notes on navigating big change

Good Shtuff

Interview love

icicle swirl
I am honored to be interviewed by the Dharma Design blog, as a Featured Artist! You can read the article here. I found the blog and shop through an Etsy forum and am so glad to have discovered her beautiful jewelry. I really love the photographs of her work and her jewelry is really unique.
Wendy features different artists all the time, which is something I love in all forms: getting to know what makes other artists tick. I always flip to the interviews in magazines first (Mary Englebreit's Home Companion has great ones with pictures of their studios) and most of my favorite podcasts have an interview or essay section (CraftSanity – my favorite!, NPR's Fresh Air, CRL with Vickie Howell). There are many many blogs that do interviews but my 2 favorite are Crafty Synergy and the
Featured Seller on Etsy.
I've pondered for a long time doing interviews with artists (in fact, I was a guest interviewer for Create a Connection), but it seems there are already so many…
Do you have any favorite interviews? Is there someone (or some type of artist) that you'd like to see/read interviewed that hasn't been?

Weekly Inspiration

I find inspiration all around me on good days. On not-so-good days, I often wish I knew where to go for an inspiration fix. So, a new weekly feature: Weekly Inspirations. It's my hope to post, on Mondays, those things that are inspiring me today. I'd love to know what inspires others, so please comment, or post your list to your own blog!
This week's list is influenced by my recent receipt of a huge amount of wool for dyeing and spinning, my weekend in Gatlinburg with girlfriends and the upcoming holidays:

  • Elf – the colors, the music, the mood, the illustrations and especially Elf's outfit and those wondrous snowflakes!
  • Corinne Bailey Rae – her songs are perfect for catching up on reading and for dyeing, even her website is beautiful
  • Pies – Since watching Waitress, I've been seeing the world through her eyes, imagining a pie for everything
  • Shari's Friday walks.
  • The new Knitty

Pincushion Love

I am besot with pincushions.
Pincushions!

1. three + three, 2. yet another, 3. cat pincushion, 4. bird nest 2 003, 5. Zingy!, 6. Donut Strawberry Erdbeer Pincushion, 7. red ladybird, 8. Cupcake Pincushion (bottlecap), 9. bottlecap pincushion, 10. koi pincushion, 11. custom order for fgantner, 12. Festival de alfineteiros!

They are just so adorable and small and fantastically useful! After stumbling upon the Flickr group, I discovered some great vendors of handmade pincushions:


edited to add: All of those pincushions inspired me to try my hand at my own. I used Purl's tutorial…but only as a rough guide. I cut the fabric a little too small, and my pincushion is minuscule.The dog added himself for scale, but keep in mind, he's little!

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