WIN One on My Necklaces at Lillyella!

Nicole is not only the artist behind the most romantic, addictive (I dare you to buy just one piece!) jewelry on Etsy - Lillyella, but she writes the most addictive blog! This week I am her featured artist! Check out my interview with Nicole (you will even find out which super power I secretly covet!) and enter her blog contest to win YOUR CHOICE of necklace from either of my shops. Thank you Lillyella!

So...Your Compost Bin is Starting to Thaw

OK, so I know we're not really thawing yet up here in the Northeast (hopefully you have been adding to your compost bin though). Next winter I want to try an indoor worm composting bin, but now that spring is just a few weeks away (and this prospect still makes me kind of uneasy) I will just work with what I have collected. Anything that was living at one time is great for compost piles such as leaves, vegetables and grass clippings. The microbes responsible for breaking down your compost pile need a balance of nitrogen and carbon. Nitrogen comes from green materials such as food scraps, manure, and grass clippings. Carbon comes from brown materials such as dead leaves, hay, wood chips and shredded newspaper. A ratio that contains equal portions of both and is well mixed (every couple weeks) works best. In the frozen winter mixing doesn't really work (and lets precious heat escape), so the best thing is to have your compost bin near your house (the easier it is to get to the more you will use it) in a dark bin in direct sunlight and fill it with brown material; leaving a hole in the middle for you to add your green materials as you collect them. When you add the green material (food scraps) cover it with a couple inches of brown material and just keep repeating this. After the spring thaw, you will turn the compost and water it as you normally would. An important thing to remember when composting is that you need those brown materials to add carbon or your pile will start to smell... bad. My pup Olive loves to roll around in our backyard compost pile if it starts to smell and believe me this is not a good thing. This year we have collected a couple wooden pallets and will be making a new outdoor pile that will keep Olive out!

Things Fall Apart So Things Can Come Together

Last year when my hubby and I were thinking we needed to spend more time together- we decided to take a pottery class (there is a bit of irony in this because pottery is actually a very solitary, almost mystical activity). I had never worked on a wheel before and he had just a tiny bit of experience many years ago. I found it hard. Of course, he picked it up right away, became teacher's pet (I will always believe the instructor had a little bitty crush on him) and drove me crazy offering up tiny bits of advice in his oh so patient teacher-voice. He was almost effortlessly making strong, interesting pieces while my own work was inconsistent, prone to collapse and reminded me of the hand-built stuff my daughter brought home from camp when she was seven. Although we used the same glazes, his always seemed to end up reflective of nature's simple beauty (or so enthused the other students) while mine more reflective of the stuff on the nature trails that you try not to step in. This experience has given me a deep appreciation of the amazing work that potters do and Etsy has many amazing masters. Recently I came across the work of Jeff Campana (CampanaCeramics) and was simply blown away. Through a process of dismantling and reassembling his pieces- he creates the most striking fault lines that add a fascinating dichotomy of fragility and strength to his work. I have always loved the things and places within us that are damaged and scarred and the concept of those things being healed over and made stronger in the process. I hope you enjoy CampanaCeramics as much as I do. I had to purchase the beautiful lavender vase for the V-Day flowers that had better be coming my way from my own Mr. Potter ...

Climbing out of the Box

At first glance this picture scared the heck out of me- some kind of genetic engineering had produced a more space effective watermelon! Yikes- what's next?! But the story is actually a great example of thinking outside the box (or inside the box in this case!). Small Japanese grocers had a problem. Watermelons, big and round, wasted a lot of space. Farmers told the grocery stores that watermelons grow round and there is nothing that can be done about it. But one Japanese farmer took a different approach. He didn’t assume the problem was impossible to begin with and simply asked himself how it could be done. It turns out that all he needed to do was place the watermelon into a square box when it is growing and it took on the shape of the box! This has got me thinking about my own assumptions, habits (I have saved myself so much time in my studio lately by asking myself if there is a better way I could be doing something), being able to look at problems from a fresh perspective and seeking the possible even in the face of what appears to be the impossible!