When I was in the second grade, I fell in love with macrame.  Don't laugh, it was 1978 :)  I know, the thought of a 7 year old making plant hangers makes me giggle a little too.  Anyway, I always loved working with my hands, and materials.  It was a perfect fit at the time...  but I'll come back to macrame in a minute...  First, I have to tell you, this summer, I got two kittens, brothers, Gandalf and Aragorn.  So sweet and adorable.

My sweet innocent little boys.  Aragorn the Wild & Gandalf the Orange.

When I adopted them from the Capital Area Humane Society, they gave me a list of houseplants that are toxic to cats.  Fortunately, I didn't have any of the plants on the list, only a Christmas Cactus, and a few Orchids that I keep up really high.  I thought my plants were okay where they were.  It didn't take long before I started finding little nibble marks and puncture wounds on the leaves of the Christmas Cactus.  So far they have left the orchids alone.  About the same time, a friend gave me a spider plant cutting.  I realized a need to get my few plants off the shelves and up in the air, out of reach of the mischievous, and apparently hungry? cats.  I instantly thought of macrame!  I started poking around the internet for macrame patterns or books, but what I found was truly amazing.  The things that contemporary artists are doing with macrame just blew me away.

                                                                          Lisa Garcia

                                                                  Catherine Williams

Sally England

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

so in 2012 i became a pinterest addict, so this week i will be highlighting some of my favorite pins of the year.  one of the things i love about pinterest is the feeling i get when i discover a new artist.  excitement, jealousy and awe.  then i go exploring to find more.  does she have a web site? OR... where does he show his work?  AND... where is she form?   AND... what artists does he like?  and so on.  i love being an explorer.  my explorations last year have lead me to some amazing new places, like...

                                                                    MAGGIE BARNES

                                                You can visit her website to read all about it.

so i made a first attempt at creating some porcelain spoons.  it was so totally fun.  here are the spoons in progress.

i'm not sure yet what i will do with glaze, glazing has always been my least favorite part of the entire process. when i was a student, i thought i would be a painter or a printmaker, then i found clay.  i realized that i really found painting to be very frustrating.  i could go over and over and over something, which made it difficult to find a place to be done.  i found that i am much more well suited to the process of forming actual objects than creating the illusion of objects on a surface.  the process of brushing a glaze onto the surface of clay objects is just not interesting to me.

A group of new pieces that have been stained with a glaze (will be sepia colored after firing.)  Next they will be glazed in the interiors.

i have mostly refined my glazing process down to staining textured areas with a glaze, wiping it off, then glazing other areas, say those that contact food, with a contrasting color.  This has been the way of it for some time now.  since the spoons are a new thing, maybe i will try a new glazing thing.  maybe i will dip them?

Alright, I confess, I'm addicted to Pinterest.  I mean, how can I possibly resist all of the fashion, home decor, art, not to mention all of the wonders I wasn't even aware of (see this post.)  Well one of the things that pop up that really caught my attention is the spoon.  Not just your average spoon, but those made by artists.  I decided to showcase the really wow spoons here.

This beauty is by Julia Smith out of Scotland.  It is red earthenware... love it.  She sells her ceramic work in her Etsy shop, JuliaSmithCeramics.

I just love this whimsical porcelain piece by Erin of erinswindow on Etsy.  She lives and works in Australia.

Perfectly finished bone china lovelies from Caroline Swift Ceramics.

Twig spoons by Michiko Shimada.

I wonder what it would look like if I made a spoon... sounds like a whim in the making, I'll keep you posted.

I finally published our Etsy shop "about" page... check it out!

http://www.etsy.com/shop/peifferStudios/about/

I'll be honest.  Life is super complicated.  I really long for a much simpler one.  I don't see it happening in the near future, but I am attempting to craft a better tomorrow.  When I think about  that tomorrow, I go to pinterest, where I browse through my boards... and daydream.

Source: themetapicture.com via Brooke on Pinterest

Source: theselby.com via Brooke on Pinterest

Source: blogs.babble.com via Brooke on Pinterest

it was foggy the other morning when i woke up.  on a whim, i ran outside and took a few pictures.