visiting hours

Come on over this weekend! Richard and I and about 20 other artists in our area are participating in the Vermont North By Hand Open Studio Tour this Saturday Sept 29 and Sunday the 30th.

http://vermontnorthbyhand.com/

This is a great time to drive around the hinder lands of Vermont, as foliage is peaking here now. Topsham and Corinth are charming villages to pass through, quite undeveloped and surrounded by meandering rivers and working farms.

There is quite a variety of creative work being done in these hills and valleys. Not only pottery, photography, fine woodworking and art on paper, but also botanical art, textile arts and even vintage motorcycle restoration.

Part of the VNBH mission is to provide education about the arts and crafts. I will be demonstrating those tricky HotHolder construction techniques. There will be 40 inch wide handmade paper being made next door. http://www.langdellpaper.com/

You can even buy something the kiddies have made (or grown!). Expect deep discounts on select pillows, aprons, HotHolders and 4-Way-Entry Bags by Mountain Ash Design. Zucchini bread, pumpkin cake and apple cider is on us.


This event called for a deep cleaning of the house and barn. Here's Richard sweeping away spider webs on the front porch. The kids like to fatten the spiders up all summer by throwing grasshoppers and flies into their webs. Not to worry. The spiders have been evicted by this point.

The pictures below are little previews of a new product I'll be debuting at the Open Studio this weekend: shoulder tote bags.

These aren't the bags. And, yes, they look like HotHolders. They are fancy patch pockets, interfaced and lined and stitched with my signature star burst and swirl. They will be sewn on the front outside of the bags.

I'm making the bags of heavier-weight fabrics and lining them, mostly, with recycled button-down shirts, so you can use those breast pockets for important little do-dads or whatever you got.

And, um, these are the other inside pockets. I was intending to introduce them with a post all their own. I've been making and selling HotHolders featuring these guys all summer. They've been one of my top sellers. I had them in a bin with the cowboys and firemen and labeled it "Firemen, Cowboys, and Handymen." Unfortunately, because of their size I can only fit their torso onto a HotHolder. Their legs and boots are so well drawn I needed to find a way to get them out in the world in their entirety. More on this in a future post.

I will be making bags free of handymen, for those of you who don't want to carry a pin-up around with your knitting.