Better Homes & Gardens
Our copy of Better Homes & Gardens Farmhouse Do It Yourself Magazine arrived in our mailbox yesterday. I waited for my late morning coffee, after chores were done and dogs walked, for the first flip through. Thanks to the editor Emily for sending this hardcopy to us from Des Moines, Iowa where BHG launched in 1922. We love how our feature came together!
It’s mud season here in rural Nova Scotia, the sloppy in-between after the wonderland of winter but before the greening up of spring. This, paired with so much post-hurricane homestead clean up still to be done around here…well, it all feels like a stark contrast to a beautiful polished Better Homes & Gardens Farmhouse magazine!
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However, on my walk up to the studio just now, emergent beauty caught my attention:
- sunshiny crocuses blooming out of decay
- robins chattering in song
- free ranging laying hens flicking debris to find food
I’m reminded that the raw, unpolished process of creation (at our forge and studio, and in life), the messy wild nature of nature is an integral part of the whole. Earth thaws; the muck holds space for emergence. In the contrast, the celebration is made that much sweeter. Perhaps this is a roundabout way of saying: our feature in this magazine feels like a celebration, a bloom in mud season.
Witch hazel and copper bowl studies.
Bits of emergence.
Hello crocus!
Candlesticks, tongs, swage block, beeswax, shadow bowl, tip of the anvil, vice, forge. Tools of the trade intermingling with end results. Morning sun on yesterday's work.