Looking Where I Eat

Okay.  That's enough snow days.  It used to be adorable, like we were on Little House on the Prairie: using words like snug and holed up, chopping wood for that great-smelling fire, wearing flannels, maybe using our red snowshoes.  Now, as they say, the bloom is off the rose.


We're making the best of it.  Husband working from home because the commute is a disaster.  Kids are still in pajamas at noon, reading in bed, playing FIFA, bellies full of gluten free pancakes and strawberries.  My house is a little louder than normal, so finding a quiet place to write is challenging.  With my back-imposed moratorium on ceramics, (poor lonely studio...crickets...) I have to get my creative kernels somewhere else.  So I'm looking where I eat.  Literally.

EARS: I'm a long time fan of theGood Food radio program hosted by Evan Kleinman
 - a good, good chef who's also a brilliant interviewer with a giant vocabulary,
 and enormous breadth of culinary knowledge?  I'm IN.  

HANDS: Today I'm trying my hand
at the GF Cauliflower Fritters
featured on Gluten Free on a Shoestring.

EYES: The pics from
 What Katie Ate
make me oh so happy. 

BELLY: It might be lowbrow, but I don't give a rat's ass.  Cashew Lovers Poppycock.  It's RIDICULOUSLY delicious.  Somehow I've only been able to find it in a small BARREL size.  Oh, well, too bad so sad.

Keep warm, butterbeans.  Go make a snack. :)

A Snowy Beehive

Zero degrees.  Ten inches of snow.  Everyone around me grumbles about the winter, but I'm happy as a bear in her den, a bird in her nest, a bee in her hive.

I baked gluten-free, low-fat banana cake with a vanilla sugar drizzle.
 I cooked pan-roasted halibut with sauteed spinach, cauliflower-potato puree and a lemon tarragon sauce avec roasted pecans. (Try saying that ten times fast.)

I happily did the laundry. (Yes.  I said happily.  Tide smells nice.)  I made sketches and added a whole slew of virtual pins to my Pinterest boards, which make me worked up and inspired for some new framed ceramic work.  (Even though I saaaiiiidddd I was taking a break....)

I started a photo blog on Tumblr.  AND wrote three chapters. (Small Victory!)  I helped older son with mid-term studying and cuddled younger son for longer than usual at bedtime.  Also: I've drunk an average of five cups of tea per day: English Breakfast, Super Antioxidant, Chamomile, Hibiscus and Decaf Green, though not necessarily in that order.

Being inside when it's unnecessary and unwise to be outside makes me feel tucked in and like our house is a crockpot of creativity, documentaries, good food and beehive mentality.

Stay warm, muffins! xo Rae

p.s. What did YOU do today?

To Begin Is Easy. To Persist Is Art.

Show up.

Write gibberish if you need to, but WRITE.

Trust and respect the process.

Take tea breaks. Lots of them.

You are not your characters.

There will always be more water in the well, even when your first bucket comes up empty.

Writing in your bathrobe is only acceptable if you're as mighty as Carver.

Wake early; write early.

Sometimes a kettle takes a long time to boil.

Keep going. Through unease, through self-doubt, through crappy writing. Nothing worthwhile is easy.

Unravelling the Year Ahead

Hmmm.  2014 hasn't started out the way other years have. That clean slate thing isn't happening.  I usually am full of vim and vigor at the start of new year - ready to attack!  Instead I found myself wrapped in a giant sweater and fingers frozen into claws, over the keyboard.

So I thought to myself: have I not let go of 2013?  Do I need to sign off on last year, before I can turn over a new page in a new notebook?  So I found my way to Susannah Conway's website.  Lo and behold, she has a FREE downloadable packet about "Unravelling the Year Ahead:  2014".  It's a thick packet, friends, I'm not gonna lie, but if you have an hour, then DO the workbook.  Just Nike that thing.

It's a place to say goodbye to those things in 2013 that held you back.  (Self: churning out artwork without intention, not making enough time to write, not finding enough patience with my children, not taking good enough care of my health.)  And it's about putting forth the INTENTION for 2014: what you want to accomplish in your head, heart and body.  (Self: finishing my manuscript, getting my back healthy, surrounding myself with good-hearted folks, painting my study.)

By putting 2013 to bed, I was able wake up 2014,  unravel it, crack it open so I could see where I really want to go.  It's revelatory, I tell you.

So I lit my candle (Paddywax's White Spruce Cassis - delish,) drank my Small World, and finished my intentions.  I feel WAY better.  Not overwhelmed.  Focused.  What a revelation to take stock in where I've been and where I'm going.

What's on your list for 2014?  Not your resolutions.  Your intentions.  Find myself surprised today as to how different those words actually are.

2014: Bullfighter and Ornery Bull

There have been years where I've made detailed resolution lists.  Decluttered my drawers and closets, cleaned the fridge.  Lit white candles and smudged sage to welcome the new year in.

This isn't one of those neat and tidy years.  It's dusty all up in here.  The tree is still up in the family room and it's drying and covering the floor nicely.

Mudstar Ceramics is on indefinite hiatus.  I'm hoping she'll make a return towards the end of 2014, but I'm really not sure.  And that's okay for now.  Clay is wonderful, but trying to develop and maintain it as a business, as well as be a good, productive person with all the rest of Life, is all-consuming.  There's no time to write.  Zero.


Resolution #1: Finish the novel.

I'm sooooo close.  Giving myself permission and the time to finish this, makes it seem doable.  It IS doable.


Resolution #2: Get my back healthy.

I've been ignoring my body for a bunch of years now, just to get the orders out, get the jobs done.  All the pain from the repetitive motions and heavy lifting have taken their toll.  I'm tired of my back and neck hurting EVERY SINGLE day.

Hello yoga, hello daily walks and stretching, hello hydration, hello core work, hello my new "Healthy Back" dvd.  Nice to see you.  We're going to be close friends; I can feel it.

As a reformed list-maker, task-master, it's weirdly freeing and sort of terrifying to make only two resolutions.  I'm currently re-assigning my expectations and inviting a new life's pace: sitting in my desk-nook, white cassis candle burning, my "Makers Gotta Make" mug (alla Noelle Horsfield) filled with green tea.  My new Write It playlist is serenading me as my manuscript and I circle one another like bullfighter and ornery bull.

I'll let you know who wins.  But let's just say that my red cape feels pretty good right now.

Write It playlist:

Exit Through You * Big Blue Ball

Whole Thing * Big Blue Ball

Aganju (John Beltran Mix) * Bebel Gilberto

You Belong to Me * Carly Simon

#41 * Dave Matthews Band

Dreamgirl * Dave Matthews Band

Downhill Racer * Everything But the Girl

Dreams * Fleetwood Mac

Spectrum * Florence and the Machine

Everlong * Foo Fighters

Let Go * Frou Frou

Split Screen Sadness * John Mayer

Handmade? Factorymade? Etsy's Policy Changes. Me on NPR.

So...I've never claimed to be the voice for anything, but I'm glad I was able to chime in my two cents on "All Tech Considered" on NPR.  Many thanks to Ashley Milne-Tyte for including me, and for showing both sides of the Etsy policy changes.

Below is the article on NPR's "All Tech Considered" program.  You can also read it and hear it on their website HERE.

Etsy's New Policy Means Some Items Are Handmade in Spirit

"Under online marketplace Etsy's new policies, vendors can now use an outside manufacturer to help make their goods.

That is not going down well with some longtime sellers, who are calling the new policies a turnaround from the site's original mission.

"Their moniker is, you know, a place to buy handmade. It doesn't say a place to buy factory-made," says Rae Padulo, a potter who began selling dishes and ornaments on Etsy in 2009.

"There's nothing wrong with factory-made — it's just, that's not what Etsy started out to be," she says. "It started out to be a place where you could get something special, something one-of-a-kind, something made by a human being."

Padulo says Etsy is abandoning makers of handcrafted goods, who, like her, only have one pair of hands.

Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson says the company is still behind lone artisans — they make up most of its one million sellers. Still, it wants to support those whose businesses are growing, and under the old rules, that was difficult. Successful vendors were frustrated that they couldn't get enough help with their work.

"We heard from a wedding seller, for example, who said that when wedding season came around she was in a state of mild panic attack, because she just reached her limit and was working, you know, 18 hours a day," Dickerson says.

Under the new policy, anyone who wants to work with an outside manufacturer has to apply and be vetted by Etsy, which makes sure the arrangement meets its ethical guidelines.

Alexandra Ferguson started her pillow business on Etsy several years ago working from home. She's since expanded her line to makeup cases made out of organic cotton with recycled felt lettering.

Ferguson's business has tripled in the last two years. She now works out of a small factory in Brooklyn with 11 employees.

Ferguson says she's proud to be creating manufacturing jobs in New York City. "That Etsy is now encouraging and embracing that growth, to say it doesn't matter how many employees you have — you can have 25, you can have 50, you can have 100 — just means we've now been given free rein to hire as much as we need to sustain our growth," she says.

But not all vendors want to grow their businesses like Ferguson did, especially those who were attracted to the site's small business ethos.


And some of its rivals are hovering, hoping to attract disappointed vendors. Padulo says she's heard from the CEO of a site called Zibbet.

"He sent an email to every account and said, 'I make a commitment: We will only sell handmade items on this site. We will never sell manufactured items,' " Padulo says. "It's music to a lot of sellers' ears, you know?"

Padulo says she's enjoyed being part of Etsy but may close her shop after the holidays.

Dickerson says he hates to lose sellers because of the new policy. But in the eight years that Etsy has been online, the creative world has changed. For example, some sellers are creating jewelry using 3-D printing.

"Those are handmade, I think, in spirit, even though they're designed on a computer and printed," he says.

He says Etsy sellers can now turn their hands to whatever innovation comes next."

Horns and Having Too Much Fun to Learn My Lesson

I turned this...

into this...
in order to reinforce the frame.

I'm making a crown.  No, not because I think I'm Queen.  (Though I do abide by tea time and a good hat.)

It's to be auctioned off at a fancy, fabulous fundraiser for the Arts Council of Princeton called Dining by Design. The theme this year is called Savage Beauty, inspired by the show at the 2011 Metropolitan Museum of Art show, featuring the incredible genius of fashion designer, Alexander McQueen.

I made these out of Model Magic.
They should be dry by tomorrow,
at which time they will become my molds
 for the papier mache versions.

I've never made a crown before, let alone one made of butterflies and horns.  Beaded horns.  With tiny, tiny beads.  This headpiece needs to be worn by an actual person during the course of the evening.  Thus, all these grand ideas are all theoretical, since I do not know what construction troubles I shall run into, before said construction is completed.  And there WILL be troubles, as I have learned over the years: from my pair of nine-foot, silver-leafed hearts.  And again from my eight-foot wide wings.  And please, lest we forget, not one, but two failed attempts at lamps in the shape of a beehive. There are many more examples, but I guess I just do not want to learn my lesson.  Or rather, I am having too much fun even failing at my lesson.

My tiny pearl white Delica beads from Fire Mountain Gems and Beads are on their way.  100 grams.  Which I think is about 10 million beads too few and will have to order more this weekend.  Oh, the trouble's just beginning...she says, alternately poised between pulling her hair out and rubbing her hands together with glee.