dahlhaus art on facebook

Finally, after much deliberation with my 'executive team' I have official launched the dahlhaus art fan page and I am it's only fan at the moment! Please join me in becoming a fan of my work!

Hold: for the Home

I'm excited to introduce you to a new local Vancouver Etsy shop called Hold! I think what first caught my eye when I stumbled on this shop were the great colours that Maria uses in her felted bowls! Modern and minimal but at the same time soft and cozy looking, I love the idea of giving these as gifts for those hard-to-gift people on my list, filled with nuts and a nutcracker at Christmas time.

I asked Maria to fill me in on some of the how and the why she started her shop. Here's what she wrote:
"I love the feeling of wool in my hands, and magical transformation of stitches into a felted fabric, sturdy and durable. It's a practice that allows me the equal satisfaction of working on a contained project from beginning to end. For the bowls, it takes several days to complete each one.
The process begins with colour selection, then wools are then crocheted into a floppy bowl. The bowl is then agitated in warm, soapy water, which causes the wool fibers to interlock more and more tightly. The result is a thick, felted fabric, a sturdy container. To complete, the bowls are blocked, dried, trimmed, then steamed one last time."

What a cool process and transformation the wool goes through to get to it's finished product! Thanks for the insight, Maria!

Shop: Hold

A day with my sister...

I'm spending the day with my sister, shopping for some maternity cloths for her, having lunch out and celebrating her birthday. She's about 4 months pregnant in this photo and I haven't seen her in over 3 weeks, so I'm sure the bump has gotten bigger!
Will be back tomorrow with my recent inspiration and experiment on clay, along with a brand new Vancouver Etsy shop that I'm excited to post about!

Happy Halloween

Just in time for halloween, we found this creepy Spider book at the thrift store yesterday (with such great font), along with a book called 'Creep Crawly Things' by National Geographic- all about snakes, lizards, frogs and turtles. Perfect for curious little boys!
We are working on a Yoda and a Robin Hood costume for tomorrow, have some glow-sticks to pass out to the kids so they are safe on the roads, and are looking forward to a few fireworks outside to celebrate the season!

For a good, good laugh, check out the Engrish site!

For a little eye candy of my ginko stem mugs check out this lovely plug here!

To check out my up-dated dahlhaus art shop take a peek here! (P.S. I have a 15% off until November 15th deal happening there- enter code word FALL09 to redeem:)

Have a Happy Halloween and see you next week!

The factory...that is the studio

I'm like a busy bee over at the studio these days and have been determined over the past 3 weeks to glaze a good enough base of work for my up-coming shows as a start to the season. I actually managed to endure 3 weeks of glazing (about 4 glaze firings) and still love what I do- a real miracle in itself. I think the beauty of working as a ceramic artist is the variety of stages you have to go through to get the work finished. That variety usually keeps me entertained enough in all the manual tasks that it can sometimes require- wedging, throwing, trimming, altering, drying, loading kiln, bisquing, unloading kiln, wiping clean, waxing bottoms, glaze inside, glazing outsides, loading kiln and finally firing and then unloading to see whether it all turned out. There are all these tiny little processes that make the outcome successful or not and time is definitely one of those main factors. Rushing ceramics is like rushing your 2 year old on a walk. Goood luck on that one. The 2 year old just wants to doddle along, discovering little sticks and bugs and leaves, saying hi to everyone you meet- and a huge tantrum will break out if you try to rush that little one home.

give-a-way on Poppytalk

There's a lot of really sweet stuff over at the Poppytalk Handmade Market and the folks at Poppytalk are doing a SWEET give-a-way to mark their 3rd Year of blogging! They are giving away a $100 gift certificate towards anything at their Market to be used within the next month! What a score! Head on over to the Poppytalk Handmade Market, choose something that you would want to buy with the cash and post it on the Poppytalk comments. I think 'tweeting' about it also get's you an extra spot! A draw will take place this friday, so hurry! shoo! come on now! get going already!... bye:)

The Grape

This weekend we drove out to Yarrow to pick up the boys from my parent's place and, of course, we had to pick up more grapes. We've already made grape juice from 20 lbs of grapes this year... and it's a lot of work... but when you see these grapevines full to the brim of these juicy concord organic grapes it just makes you want to do something with them.
You might just be asking what we are doing with all this juice? Well, we usually manage to make a couple of batches of Grape jelly for the year with a few extras to give a way to friends and family. But also, the grape juice is really amazing. It's like eating a bunch of fresh grapes, it tastes that fresh and delicious.

Produce Market inspired Ceramics

It's the week of Halloween and while last year we found pumpkins at a local pumpkin patch, this year I'm wishing I could own one of these ceramic pumpkins by Daniel Reynolds. I love his clever idea of creating molds of fruits and vegetables that he finds inspiring at his local produce market and then slip-casting them into vase and bowl forms! Nature is so beautiful in porcelain, isn't it?

The new music room

We've made a few changes around here since learning about our son's troubles at school. On the school front, he did get moved into a new reading group this week that better matches where he's actually at for reading, along with being closer to grade 2 reading levels. It seems that some of the extra help and incentives we were giving him at home paid off, and probably, he wasn't really that far behind to begin with. There is a bit of hope at the end of the tunnel after-all. He still isn't keen on going to school every morning, but I feel like we need to get through the fall and re-assess before considering a bunch of other options.
The other change I made was that I tackled the play room which was so littered with lego and stuff that you couldn't even walk inside of it. Yikes, I had really let this one go far too long!
For a while I had been wanting to set up the keyboard for the boys. Not to put them in formal piano lessons yet, but just to give them the opportunity to play music whenever they feel like it! I can't stress enough how good this switch has been- a little music room of their own for them to pull down whatever instrument and play.
The last pic shows you some of the little treasures that the boys make at the studio while I try to get a few things done. I finally found a little home for some of them to be displayed in, made by Dean's folks a few years ago as a Christmas present.

needle, hook, wear

I caught myself at the library the other day, picking up and looking through a 'teach yourself to Knit' book. Who am I kidding?
That said, I love hand-knit scarves and with the chilly fall weather coming up, this 'Nomad Cowl' by Seed Knits is exactly the sort of thing I want around my neck! I'm loving the grey hues and soft Peruvian wool! I also love the fact that you can pull it over your head like a hood as one side is wider than the other. It doesn't have any long scarfy bits that could get in the dishwater or clay, so I could wear it indoors too.
Stephanie from Seed Knits informed me that she will be at the Portobello West Market here in Vancouver November 28th & 29th! (I'll be there too:)
blog- seedknits.blogspot.com
Etsy- seedknits.etsy.com

Niche Awards, Finalist!

I just received the great news that my Poppy Bottle Vase was chosen as a finalist for the 2010 Niche Awards, Molded Ceramics Category! Chosen from over 1000 entries... I must admit, I'm a little surprised, but really pleased! The final award is based on these three criteria:

• Technical excellence, both in surface design and form
• A distinct quality of unique, original and creative thought
• Market viability (professional entries only)

P.S. These vases can be purchased on my online shop or from Etsy!

Indie Love

The Poppytalk Indie Love Market opened this morning with some really lovely hand-made items brought to you in time for a little early Holiday shopping! I know it's only mid-October and there is lots of time to shop, but if you are like me and try to avoid the Malls at all costs, online shopping is the way to go! And better early than later or your shipping costs and time-frame get tighter- that's stress I could do without!

I did another attempt at a photo-shoot yesterday afternoon- it was pretty cloudy outside, and while it's certainly not anything close to my professional images, there is a bit of a 'charm' to them. Anyways, it's still clear to me the home photo-shoot is something I have to work on this coming year- I might just have to buckle down and buy some lights and a good backdrop!

On the studio front I finally came up with a good Christmas Tree Decoration for this year. I do try to come up with one every year and this year I was drawing huge blanks. I really didn't want to do a cookie cutter ornament, let's just put it that way. So some prototypes are in the works and I'll post photos when I have some samples!

Weekend Shop Up-dates...

I'm spending the weekend trying to up-date my Etsy shop with some new work that came out of the kiln on Friday, just in time for the Poppytalk Handmade Market that will open on Monday! This sweet pair of press-molded tile frames felt like they belonged together. You can purchase them here!
Happy Weekend!

Keepin it real...

Life here at the real Dahl house has been a little crazy as of late, I must admit. I won't go into long lists of what we all have to manage each week to keep these active boys fed, to school on time, picked up, to swimming lessons and kids clubs, to clean clothed while also trying to keep on top of everything that needs doing at the studio... I will just elaborate on some of the unfortunate news I received from my son's teacher regarding how behind he is as a student this past week.
I will admit that I was surprised to learn that my son's reading level puts him back to the beginning of grade 1 when he is in grade 2. Same teacher as last year. No big warning signs on his report card last year- yes he has been in Learning Assistance for reading, but really, back to grade 1?
So I've been asking around about what best to do, what to look out for in the way of learning lapses or problems, sorting out what his learning style might be, and generally trying to keep him happy about school these days. It's not easy- again tonight he asked if he could quit school. Quit school? In grade 2? Yikes, we've got 11 more years of this school thing- somehow we've all got to make it through.
My research has led me here if you are interested in more on boys and literacy...

SFM10

I'm re-posting this one, due to a little trigger-happy post I did early last week... the official launch of the website and the postcards was this weekend, and now that I have all my facts sorted out, I can do this for realz this time:) Here it is:

The Shiny Fuzzy Muddy show started 10 years ago with current members being Laura McKibbon, Astrosatchel, Kari Woo and Arleigh Wood. Each year they invite a crew of other artists, designers and makers whose work fits in with the adverbs shiny, fuzzy, or muddy to join their holiday show! This year it's at the Heritage Hall on Main street in Vancouver on December 12 & 13.

P.S. If you would like to receive my quarterly newsletters (via email), and/or be mailed this lovely postcard via email, please email me at heather@dahlhausart.com with your postal address or just your email. I am hosting a 15% off until November 15th sale on my etsy and dahlhaus shop which all subscribers can benefit from no matter where you are from!