ConContinuContinuing with the theme from last week, this week I’ve crafted another hydrangea piece – this time a brooch in a green, blue and purple gradient.

Now that things are warming up here in Saskatoon, the trees and garden beds have really come into their own – festoons of flowers dot the streets with bright points of color, and the local flower farms are getting ready for picking parties where people can come and fill buckets with blooms. I’ve even done some of my own planting. Aside from a garden box full of herbs and a small hanging basket of strawberries, I planted some peonies, irises, and black lilies. I was considering planting some hydrangeas too, but most of the ones we saw at the nursery were a bit too large for our small beds.

Having grown up in Florida, I didn’t really experience seasons in their full glory until I moved to Japan. While that first winter wasn’t he first time I’d seen snow – as I had seen flurries while changing flights up north once – it was the first time I’d fully experienced winter. And, now that I’ve lived in Canada for a decade, I’ve come to value our short – but glorious – summers so much more.

It feels good to work outside with plants – although I don’t claim to have much of a green thumb. Still, I feel almost as much satisfaction watering my plants as I do crafting new silk work. I feel like it puts me in touch with nature and the seasons and helps ground and inspire my tsumami-zaiku practice.

On the topic of satisfaction, I’ve come to realize that mental satisfaction, plays a big part in preventing burn out. I derive a great deal of mental satisfaction from completing works and checking them off my list – so the longer I go without seeing my production list shrink the more melancholic I become. That’s why, even though I still have quite a bit of dye work to get through, I’ve taken a break from dyeing, starching and cutting new fabric so that I can complete a slew of new pieces.

With this hydrangea piece, I’ve used up the majority of my watercolor-style gradient dyed fabric. I’m looking forward to dyeing more of this style, but I want to clear a significant portion of my production list before I do more dye work. I’ve so far completed 477 of roughly 730 pieces, and I’d like to get through around 100 more items in the next month – mostly single flower lapel pins.

Aside from crafting these new pieces, I’ve also started migrating my shop back to Etsy.

I used to host my shop on Etsy, and I’m moving back now since I had better sales while the online shop was hosted through Etsy. While I’m going to maintain my own website and blog, I feel like Etsy will have better traffic. Since I’ve never been great or persistent about promotion, it just makes sense for me and my practice. I generally prefer in-person sales, but I like giving people options and hopefully this means more people will be able to enjoy my work.

Anyhoo, that is all I’ve got for today. 🙂

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