sea-side pea-town.

we woke up today at deb and alec's lovely home (totally cluttered by our presence) and got ourselves down to craftland at a very reasonable hour in the late morning. i love both our weekend home and the shop/gallery we were spending the day in. craftland was born as an annual pop-up shop in december that recently made the transition to a year-round shop and gallery in downtown providence. the annual show still goes on - the shop and gallery are stripped of moving walls and the conversion takes place. even though i have had my stuff in the show for the past couple of years, i have not been through providence since 2008. i could hardly believe this when we figured it out. so this trip marks my first visit to the year-round shop and gallery.

even though i was supposed to spend the day seated at my trunk show station, i found endless excuses to get up and wander around. the ladies at craftland have done an excellent job at selecting the stock (the collection being curated mostly by jen corace). there is a lot of stuff here that i haven't seen elsewhere - risd must be turning out a lot of impressive print makers, for instance - or the local community just found itself here. even the items from artists i see in many shops are selected with a very specific care towards a cohesive collection. this has always been clear in the button packs and singles ordered from me. they always go for very unique and deliberate combinations of stuff that i don't usually think of. craftland feels totally its own. and it's huge by indie craft shop standards. huge.

you can click on photos to find out more about the pieces. hopefully, deb and the craftlanders will help me fill in the blanks about pieces i took poor notes on.

there was also a show in the gallery that i was pretty enamoured with. curated by liz sheehan, it focuses on souvenirs (one of many themes of mine). i especially liked the wooden pennants and tiny polaroid dioramas by james milostan for the paul bunyan fine art project. the preservation of this sort of mythology is a real soft spot for me. i also have to find out more about brooklyn rehab - the banner under which alyssa zygmunt made those pigeon feather specimens and accompanying bed bugs (not pictured).

so long, craftland. we will be back. oh, we will be back.

evening offices.

rolled back into philly and was immediately treated to this as my sunset office space for computering and button making (courtesy of our friends paul and catharine at fireball printing). paul had a lot to do with our connection to this city. well, almost everything. we came here for the first time while on tour with the big art show and met most of the people we know in this part of the world through him and those long-ago events.

it's pretty magical to be able to roll into an active workspace while hustling between cities and have an immediate place to hunker down. people who understand you doesn't hurt either.

here are some other views of the print shop and their gallery space (pterodactyl):

home studio philadelphia.

this evening we were treated to a delightful succession of home studio invitations from a couple of my favourite philly craft-makers, giant dwarf and something's hiding in here. our evening began with a visit to sue's two half apartments (one for living and sleeping, one for crafting and cooking). the building is set up in a very strange way but has all the charm that i would expect someone with sue's design style to gravitate towards. even though i have my own office/studio back at our home in toronto, i envied her spaces - halfway between separated and in-home makes a lot of sense to me. oh, and her collection of vintage fabrics, vintage trims and new felts is incredible. although the visit was mostly social, i was there on a bit of business, too. i have been charged with the exciting task of picking a fifteen-colour palette of fancy felt for sue's upcoming artist series. it made me totally neurotic to try to pick a scale of fifteen colours that defined the sweetie pie press. instead, i narrowed it down to a sort of vintage, 1970's scheme that echoed the make-up of the first giant triangle for my hive series project. here's my first stab (as hand modelled by aitor):

sue gave me the torturous option of revision so there may be changes. it did help to compare my picking to that of her first artist bundle's creators, shauna and stephen. their work with colour and palette is remarkable. so is the pleasant feeling i get from hanging out with them. after years of passing craft fair (and bar thereafter) friendship, it was so lovely to get to visit their perfect home and sip drinks, chat and snack. what a lovely night!

something made me not want to take pictures. a night off, perhaps? but sue took some great pictures of their home and our treats. it will give you a sense of how extremely apt they are at decoration and display. also, what generous hosts they are and fun people to spend time with. thank you all for a thoroughly delightful evening. we got to feel grown-up, solid and less filthy for an evening. now to get some rest for tomorrow's potentially drizzly craft fair on trenton avenue (don't worry, the attached kinetic sculpture derby is even better in mud)...

home fries.

we're tired but need to keep getting things done. as much as we tried to work, it was so much easier to just hang out with puppy dogs and kids. here hazel eats julie's amazing cheddar and vegetable soup off the new table/desk/chair/hat that she made out of aitor's scrap mac-tac and a box i had to cut up. i think she is onto something good. julie's soup is already 100% something good.

oh, brother.

today was about the most perfect day i can remember in all my years of outdoor show exhibiting - no rain, little wind, not too hot, not too cold. i was divine.

i thought i would share the couple of acquisitions i managed to squeeze into this hectic weekend. that house drawing up there (by the maple ridge) is destined for a very special purpose. the sewn terrarium (below) by melissa kistler is bound for my curiosity cabinet when i return home. i saw shauna buy one last year and was very envious so melissa's work was definitely on my mind this time around.

this fair also marks the introduction of a new display solution to my table. i decided to take the smuttons on the road but needed to find a family-friendly way to display them. take a serving thermos, make a divider to fit inside, add a tag and labelling tape (thank you, aitor) and ta da! lewd buttons safe from little eyes.

innovations, acquisitions, old/new friends. it was a great day. and look at the view we had the entire time:

...well, that lady's legs were no there all day. but you get the idea. and as quickly as it came, it was gone. thank you, art star. thank you, philadelphia. i love coming back to your art prints and outstanding ceramics. don't worry; we're still here for another week. you're a weird place, philly, but we find it hard to leave in a hurry.

an art star's journey into night.

i can't believe this is my fourth year at the art star craft bazaar. and i am so happy to finally sit down to an outdoor show with a clean and clear forecast. that up there is isaiah who came by to visit us today, water ice in hand. i spent much of the day at the booth, trying to sort out our under-table situation, but did manage to run away for a little while to dart around penn's landing trying to focus on things.

maybe i have some kind of baby fever, but i found the children's woolens, knitwear and toys from lumpkin to be totally fantastic - organic, playful, well composed. okay, i will admit it - i just want a vest with tongue pockets. for me, being childless is to be doomed to a life of childishness.

aitor also managed to match some new messages with the new labelling tape colours he recently acquired. this was my favourite:

it was such a busy day, we mostly just talked to people and kept things tidy. after it was all over, my sweetie was so pooped than even a pack of wild dogs running all over him couldn't keep him awake.

after a little nap, we somehow stumbled into a nine-year-old's birthday party. great amounts of fun were had by all (save maybe spongebob who did not weather the evening well).

hello, brothers.

we got into philadelphia last night and rolled into our adoptive family's house just outside of the city. two grown-ups, three kids and five dogs were there to greet us. it was the best.

today we said some more hellos around town. we dropped by art star (more updates on those cool cats coming in the next week-and-a-bit) and fireball printing/pterodactyl to meet up with our friends paul and catharine and pick up some business cards for the tour. service with a smile at affordable prices - never mind the jerky elevator, i love these guys.

laurel and hearty.

greetings from another motel, this time we are in laurel, maryland.

that last picture was taken for faythe. i am seeing hand painted signs everywhere now because of her.

speaking of giant food, our reviews of a dutch beer-based soup can be found here and here. on top of having been saved from homelessness by some total strangers in arlington, one of them turned out to be a vegetarian food blogger. apparently, we were expected to eat to earn our rent. can do.

nail biter.

why what is this here on the thrift store shelf? a futuristic city scape rendered in nails? a dusty harbinger of our post-apocalyptic future? nope. think again...

nail-based floral wall art! can you even imagine? this opens up a whole new world of art and craft to me. at first, i decided to photograph it as a substitute action for the impracticalities of taking it cavorting with us. then, somehow, while positioning and documenting it, i fell in love. what am i doing with this thing? it catches on everything else in the car. i don't know; you guys will either have to convince me to have a giveaway on the blog or i will have to convince myself to keep it so that i can return home and hang it on the wall of my office to remind me of how big, beautiful and weird the world is.

rochester, the bester.

may one, day one. i can't believe we are still operating on as little sleep as we have had. we spent the day today at the inaugural incarnation of rochester's mayday underground crafts and art. i always like going to new shows and new places. rochester is very close to toronto (thank goodness), but i don't find myself there very often. as we drove in, i was reminded of a craft fair i must have done here in 2005 or 2006. it was small and also included a punk rock show; those were somewhat different days.

today's show was a bit larger than i expected. it was still small enough that i managed to take some walks around. with three hours of sleep, my gaze was a bit hazy, though. it took some serious hyperbole to catch my attention. speaking of which, below is some majorly hyperbolic works by carol traynor of buenahelena. one is an entirely hand beaded ouija board and the other an embroidered and beaded 80's skirt.

in my exhaustion, i did not ask much about artistic motivations but i know the madonna skirt was related to getting through a tough time in her life.

also, who can argue with a craft fair that has a back alley barbeque?

i even ended up with a bit of great loot, too. a yeti ring by buenahelena (made from real yeti fur), a felted owl by peaches products (one of the organizers) and some incredible handspun yarn by crumbs & co. i love the colour palette of the latter and plan to make a neck warmer out of it (i conveniently forgot all the ones i normally use at home). in fact, jazz, who spins everything at crumbs & co., has an exceptional sense of colour. i wish i could have bought a whole bunch of her blocky striping yarns. although not pictured, i was also deeply tempted by the yarns and rovings from fuzzy bunny. i could see the reverend rolling his eyes at me, though.