Inspired Image: Amy of My Saturnalia

Hello my name is Amy Neill.

You can find me at www.mysaturnalia.etsy.com

This image comes from artist Beth Weintraub I found her on the site www.dearada.typepad.com

It inspires me because I love etchings and patterns and the way she works with color.

I particularly love the delicateness and texture of the piece.

It makes me feel like I need to do more collage. Explore deeper and reach higher...

3 words it conjures up are depth, movement, femininity.


Amy sells lovely photographs and mixed media collage in her etsy shop and I couldn't resist sharing a few images of hers with you here.



I hope that one of these images sparks a little bit of creativity in you and that you find some time to play with that over the weekend. I'm heading to Chicago to go to Renegade Craft Fair on behalf of ReadyMade (and to spend some time with my brother and hopefully eat at Rick Bayless' new restaurant!), but I'll be sure to report back about the highlights of the fair right here next week. Though if you're interested, I'll be blogging over the weekend (and tweeting! follow us twitter.com/readymadetweets!) at readymade.com, so come on over and see what the Renegade fuss is all about.

Q&A: Jess Gonacha

I am very excited to share today's Q&A with you. I've been a big fan of Jess's work for a long time and this year I've gotten to know her work pretty well through her calendar. (You can pre-order one for 2010 here!) I love her use of bright, bold patterns and colors and that everything she makes seems to have a positivity about it. Here's more from Jess:

Name: Jessica Gonacha Swift
Location: Just outside of Atlanta, GA, in the suburbs
Website/Blog: www.jessgonacha.com, www.jessgonacha.blogspot.com, jessgonacha.etsy.com
Facebook page: www.facebook.com/jessgonacha
Twitter: twitter.com/jessgonacha (@jessgonacha)

Tell me a little bit about what you make and how you started making it? I make a variety of things-- paintings, illustrations, prints of paintings and illustrations, calendars, coasters, necklaces, repeating patterns... Basically I've just been drawing and painting for as long as I can remember, and I'm always looking for new surfaces to cover with my designs!

For someone who hasn't seen your work, how would you describe your style? My style is colorful, quirky, uplifting, a little bit whimsical, and happy, I think.

Did you have any teachers who became mentors along the way? Ummm, not really. When I was in art school I had a teacher who I loved, and we've sort-of kept in touch, but my education was very traditional for the most part, and my work has changed a lot since then. My main teacher these days is the blog world, I think. So I guess I have a whole bunch of mentors if I think about it that way!


How has your creative process changed as you've been able to increase your interaction with customers online? Or, if it hasn't changed, what does being on twitter and having an active etsy profile add to your creative process? I've started thinking more about products, I think, since I started selling work online. I try to make things that I would personally want to buy. I like interacting with people online and getting feedback about what I'm doing. Sometimes my customers will suggest things for me to make, which is great! I love getting input from other people, and knowing that people are out there looking at my work is very motivating.

Where do you find your inspiration? I find inspiration everywhere-- out walking in my neighborhood is when I get my best ideas, but I can also easily be inspired by books, movies, an interesting color combination somewhere (on a sign or a website,) interesting looking people, a pattern on a piece of clothing in a store, conversations.... it's endless!

Is this your full time work? Yes! I'm so grateful to say that it is.

What's the best part of your day? I really love breakfast time first thing in the morning. I make a smoothie and drink some coffee while checking my email, reading through my favorite blogs, and posting on my own blogs. I love the feeling of a fresh new day in front of me.

What's a favorite item that you've made or that you're working on? I'm pretty crazy about the necklaces I've been making the last few months, featuring my repeating patterns. They're all different, and I love looking at them hanging all together!

What do you hope customers experience when they purchase your work? I hope my work makes people happy. I think most of my work has an air of positivity and hope in it, so I hope people take that away when viewing it. Mostly I just want to make people smile and feel like they made the right choice in purchasing something from me.

My Office's Garden, A Tour

Last Friday I had the pleasure of meeting a few friends in the garden outside of my office at Meredith for lunch. The garden is only open to the public on Fridays, and it draws decent crowds (Meredith publishes Better Homes and Gardens, as well as Successful Farming, so it's grounds at meticulous!). Even though this was only my third time in the garden, I am fortunate that I can enjoy this lovely setting every day of the week as an employee.

I brought my camera with me to lunch since I realized that the flowers won't be in bloom that much longer and that I wouldn't have too much longer to share this incredible setting with you this season. Plus, when I first moved out here, my mom came for a brief visit and unsuccessfully tried to see the inside of the garden (it was locked up for the weekend). I figured she should see how pretty it is, even from a far!

There are very nice tables and chairs in the main central section of the garden, that are shaded by trees, making it a nice spot to relax even on a hot summer day.

That building in the background on the left is where I go to work every day. Pretty nice, right?

These roses were very nearly past their prime, but I love the color. And it was really fun to take a lot of photos with my new camera and not have any of them turn out blurry (as was the case with my former one)!

Huckleberry Cheesecake

I had quite the time in the kitchen last Thursday and Friday making this amazingly delicious cheesecake. You might be wondering why I used huckleberries since they certainly don't grow here in Iowa. Well, this was a birthday present for my boyfriend Josh who grew up in Montana where he ate and picked a lot of huckleberries. So huckleberries (canned, which I ordered from a farm in MT) it was! I used a blueberry cheesecake recipe from epicurious and sought the advice of one of the helpful ladies in the test kitchen at work for the amount of cornstarch to use to thicken up the topping which was actually a breeze to make.

Here are a few things I learned from making this:
1. I dislike springform pans. I think that someone should develop a new version of a pan that allows you to release the sides after baking, but that has a tight seal around the bottom. I cooked this in a water bath, per the recipe, and carefully and tightly wrapped it the pan in one large sheet of heavy duty aluminum foil. I was really worried that the water would leak and it did, a bit. Thankfully, the rest of the cake was so good that it was easy to overlook that the crust wasn't as dry as it should have been. Still, it was very frustrating.
2. I really like cheesecake, both in batter form and when fully baked.
3. Having been raised very close to the Blueberry Capital of the World (or so says the signage in Hammonton, NJ), I will always view them as my favorite berry. But, I can see the appeal of huckleberries (did you know they are called "purple gold"?) because they definitely have a distinct flavor and a lovely color. Whether one is better than the other, I can't say and I'm pretty convinced there is room in my world for both!
4. Cheesecake for breakfast is an excellent idea. Particularly with coffee.
5. A 10" inch spring form pan makes an enormous cheesecake. I carefully wrapped up a few pieces and tucked them into the freezer. I probably won't wait all that long to enjoy them, so I hope they hold up!

The other big food news from my kitchen this weekend is that I made a minestrone using vegetables from my CSA share (fennel, shallot, potatoes, celery, yellow squash, tomatoes, white beans) and I stirred in some homemade pesto. My thoughts about vegetable soup are forever changed because it was so ridiculously good due to the pesto. If there was ever a doubt that I'd eat my way through my weekly produce share, it's entirely gone. I hope you all enjoyed your long weekend and happy back to school to those of you (like my mom, who's a school nurse) starting this week.

Inspired Image: Kelly Wilkinson of Make Grow Gather

Hello, my name is Kelly Wilkinson.

You can find me at Make Grow Gather.

This image comes from a recent trip to Ireland.

It inspires me because it’s the view from atop the hill behind a family cottage in Ireland, and so many happy things have happened there. When we’re at the cottage, we read and sleep and make things and take walks all day long and heat our bathwater from the fire.

I particularly love that I look at this and can smell stones and damp air and chimney smoke.

It makes me feel so happy.

The 3 words it conjures up are long, slow days.


Kelly is an amazingly talented crafter and journalist who you can also find over at Heart Handmade. Her blog is one of my first stops when I check my google reader each day. I particularly love the apron she recently posted on her blog—very much makes me want to get to sewing.

I'm extremely excited about the coming long weekend. I feel like I've been doing a pretty decent job of really enjoying my weekends lately (by which I mean not working on the weekends) but I am definitely looking forward to an extra day to unwind. I'm sure my work sounds familiar in that there are always many things to do, and often, it feels like all of those things have to happen at the same time. That said, I feel extraordinarily fortunate to genuinely love what I am doing right now, and to feel challenged and inspired on a very regular basis. Plus, it's just plain fun. However, a girl needs a break once in a while and I intend to make the most of it!

Two things you can look forward to next week: highlights from a farm tour/heirloom tomato tasting/slow food potluck at my CSA farm on Sunday and the results of a super top secret kitchen endeavor. No details until next week but I will say that I am thankful that I have the lovely people at my test kitchen at work to consult for advice! Until Tuesday!

Fabric Card and Secret Craft in the Works

I've been working on a few projects lately, and while I can't share what the ingredients above are for just yet, I thought I'd give you a sneak peek because the fabric is making me happy. I'm making it from quilting leftovers, working my way through my pile of scraps from projects past. Those are my pinking shears, though I haven't yet decided whether they'll be used or not. Still debating.


I'm on a bit of a fabric crafting kick, trying to use some things up before my next trip back to NYC when I plan to go to my favorite fabric store to get some new yardage. This is one of the birthday cards I made over the weekend—early September is big in the extended Palanjian family with four bdays in the first 9 days of the month, with a bundle falling on the 3rd. The card above is for my Aunt Chrissy, who lives in a very awesome JCHAI house in the suburbs of Philadelphia. It's simply a creamy blank card that I picked up at Michaels a while ago, with small scraps of fabric layerd on top of each other and secured in place with Mod Podge. It's thick and textured and I hope she likes it! I'll share the other cards once I know that the recipients have seen them first.

A Personal Milestone, on Two Wheels

On occasion, I let you behind the cooking and crafting areas of my life and today is going to be one of those days because I can hardly contain myself. Almost exactly a year ago, I hurt my back. Three months after that initial injury, I hurt it again for a grand total of three herniated discs in the lower region (each in a different direction, which my doctor informed me he'd never, in all his years of being a doctor, seen). What followed was a series of muscle relaxers, days lost in a fog of drug-induced sleep, mri's, physical therapy, and general unhappiness as my active self was put to the ultimate test—just walking around was painful. No more running, I couldn't really bend over so yoga was kind of out of the question and definitely no backpacking or mountain climbing since my hips simply couldn't handle the pressure strain.

Gradually, though, throughout the spring, things started to improve and the leaving the city—and the stress of it—definitely helped ease the pain. Though I did have another round of spasms in mid-June that was, as you can imagine, very disheartening.

When I moved out here, I brought my road bike as inspiration. I wasn't sure when I'd be able to be back on it, and for the time that I've been here, I've been riding my hybrid which allows for a more upright position. I've really been loving that bike, both riding it around the bike trails here and for transportation back and forth to work. But my purple bike—built for me by my brother-in-law Dave—was calling to me. Recently, since yoga has gotten a lot easier (I can bend over!! Do headstands!) and my body is generally less creaky, I decided it was time. I took the bike for a tune up, bought a new pair of bike shorts, and ventured out for the first time this morning.

I admit that I let the fear build up in my head. I was really scared that I wouldn't remember how to clip in and out of my pedals. Worried that I'd fall or get a flat tire. But I decided that I just had to do it because my fear was getting out of hand. And I have this morning was amazing. Not only did my back not hurt, it was FUN. And hard. And incredibly freeing to realize that I've made such progress, and that I can start to embrace challenging myself physically again (within reason, of course).

All of this is to say that while I realize that the reality of my back will always be with me in some way, this feels like an enormous milestone and I wanted to share my happiness with you.

Back to regularly scheduled programming tomorrow!