Need to catch up? Days 1-5; days 6-10; days 11-15.
March Meet the Maker Day 16: Helper. (I skipped yesterday, "Boomerang", which is a free app I've been thinking about learning but this is not the best week to teach an old dog new tricks...) I get a lot of help. Well. "help". I mean, sometimes I do get actual real help, from friends who will come over sometimes when I'm swamped, to wind yarn or glaze simple ceramics for me. But most of the time this is the kind of help I get. My "staff" consists of two house cats and two house dogs (The House Girls), three inside/outside "feral" cats (The Studio Boys) and a recalcitrant, reclusive Gopher Tortoise (Gramps). Occasionally I hear from The Driveway Cranes and The Back Yard Hawk, and there's a Roving Gang of Wild Turkeys that comes by every now and then.... but mostly... it's just like this photo. Cats supervising me.
March Meet the Maker Day 17: Customers and Feedback. Here's a picture of me with some of my regular customers, in my back yard! These people, and others like them but who aren't within driving distance, are the heart and soul of HaldeCraft. My customers are fun, playful, thoughtful, talented, caring, smart, and I am constantly humbled by and championed by the community that has sprung up around my craft. The feedback they give me in invaluable in helping me know where to direct my energies, be it in new social media forms, product improvements, even shipping materials. I know to listen to these people not just because human beings deserve to be heard, but also because what they tell me is important and should be considered. If someone is bold enough to bring something to me, there's a nugget of something in what they say that I need to hear.
March Meet the Maker Day 18: Inspiration. I take inspiration from a lot of things; looking at other people's art... listening to music... reading... but these days I seem to get most of it from just going outside. The colors. The sounds. The texture in trees and leaves. The smell of woodsmoke from leaf burning. It all gets my brain humming!
March Meet the Maker Day 19: Can't Live Without. Hmm. OK. This is deep, but... something that I can't live without is ... having a single moment every day, so beautiful that it takes my breath away. The light of sunset through the Spanish Moss. The purr of a cat curled up on my lap, half-asleep. My sister-in-law walking and rocking a tired crying baby when she is tired herself. A hawk taking flight mere feet from me. The sound of the rain on the roof. I can't live without little gifts from the universe that remind me that ... life is beautiful. Every day is a gift.
March Meet the Maker Day 20: Tools and Materials. Hopefully I'm getting all four photos I took uploaded here correctly! I couldn't pick just one set of tools or materials to talk about, so here's a little bit of everything. In ceramics (Picture 1), my trusty Pacifica, some Laguna B-mix, and in back, many of my grandmother's plaster molds for slipcasting. Representing the yarn (Picture 2), here are all the dyes I use. You'll wish the soap fragrances (Picture 3) were in smell-o-vision because boy howdy do they make my studio smell divine! And last but not least, my latest craft endeavor (Picture 4) is of my anvil, forge, and in the background close to the large kiln you can see my post vice and tools.