Working by candlelight

Exciting Just Potters news!

I am so pleased that JustPotters was featured on Design Sponge yesterday! Grace's blog is amazing so this is a very big honour. I am also excited to be able to share some of the photos I took for this new range of ceramic ware that is being made in the studio just across the road from here. JustPotters is such a wonderful, local, social enterprise so I can't support them (or encourage you to do so) enough! I had a lot of fun taking the pictures, baking, drinking tea and 'testing' these beautiful hand made products which I can absolutely vouch for. Here are some of the pictures that didn't make the cut (and a couple that did).










An enourmous thank you as well to all of the JustWork and JustPotters team who have worked so hard on this project; Robyn our ceramic artist. Leigh and David our inspiring leaders, Amy, for all of her amazing design work, and that's only just the beginning. It's been a great joy to be a part of the JustWork community.

Forbidden fruit

One thing I miss about home is the citrus. We had an amazing lime tree in our back yard that seemed to produce enough limes for us to use them daily, year-round, in every way imaginiable, and still be giving them away each week as well. Here in Vancouver you can buy citrus of course, but it all comes up from California. A couple of things over the past year have taught me, and reinforced in me a passion for the importance of eating locally and seasonally and enjoying produce in it's time and place. That means no bananas, mango, pineapples, avocados or citrus for a time. But in return, I get to enjoy all of the beautiful local fruit and vegetables that wont grow in humid Brisbane - things like the summer berries galore. At the moment the winter market vegetables here mainly consist of beets and potatoes (and a few more things), but a few months of these staples is absolutely worth it for the excitement that spring and summer bring with their abundance.

Anyhow, this is all very important to me, but today I gave in. And bought these gorgeous looking things from California. A treat. A vitamin C boost for this grey day.

Winter light

 

Goodness me. January flew by and it's already the 7th of February! Last post I was celebarting Christmas and looking ahead to the new year. Now it is in full swring and shaping up to be as great an adventure as any. Highlights for me so far have included snow and almond crossiants (nothing new on either front). I also experienced my coldest day to date -7 (minus 7 degrees celcius!) AND that was during the daytime, while I stood outside on playground duty for 1 hour! Compared with the rest of Canada which regularly hits -40 that seems like a summers day, but for this little Aussie that's something to write home about. Here are some colours of winter. I've spotted spring bulbs poking their heads up already so I want to celebrate this season while it is still here. Image above courtesy of Jill Barklem, author and illustrator of the Brambly Hedge books. Stories from my childhood I've fallen in love with all over again.




An east Vancouver spectacle is the crows flying east overtop EVERY afternoon around sunset.




But Jesus Christ is the light of the world. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it.

(John 1:5) At church we have been using this phrase when speaking about some aspect of darkness in the lives of children aroundthe world. I find these words so reassuring when the daylight hours are few and there seems to be darkness in the lives of so many.