The NorthWesternBelle

ICYMI: I covered all the big news in Issue 1 of the NWB Monthly Newsletter last week.. I was able to spend about six hours total in the studio last week, which is triple the time I have been averaging per week. It was so awesome. I got so much accomplished. Nearly too much, to be honest, because I'm going to be burning through clay at this rate. I plan to recycle as much as I can to be efficient, but it is still $20 per 25 lbs, and I don't love working with anything less than 2 lbs at a time. Tuesday night is my regular class, which runs from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. I got to the studio around 2:30 and was there until 6:40, because it was also Halloween. It was also a potluck, to which my awesome teammate brought tasty beer! So tasty! In those hours I trimmed a set of square bowls that I had thrown two weeks previously. Their altered forms and a bit-too-dryness complicated matters, and two of the five did not survive. One cracked at the rim, the other flew off the wheel whi...

I really love my current schedule. At my real job, I work Sunday through Wednesday, 10 hours shifts. This gives me Thursday, Friday and Saturday off each week, which is seriously fantastic. I usually manage to get some crafting in each weekend, but it's not often as much as I'd like. Between cleaning my house (a constant struggle), my three-year-old and the hubby, I'm lucky to actually finish any projects. This weekend the bestie and I decided it was time for a craftathon, and we went for it on Friday. She spent most of the day cutting fabric for a commissioned quilt. I spent most of the day organizing my crafting headquarters (aka, the living room). I don't have a before picture because it was really bad before, but here's the after: Yeah, that's the massive ripple blanket that I've been working on for about a year...it's 99.9% finished. It's going to be done soon..... Anyhow. I managed to compress all of my finished handmade product i...