I mentioned that an invitation to Friends of the Studio would be coming soon. Well, here it is. A quick note for those farther afield: this will be the only Friends of the Studio email sent to my full list. From here, dates and updates will only go to those who opt in. Why show up? Because it can be surprisingly hard to make time for the things we love. A million other things grab our attention, and the sketchbook stays closed, the mending sits in its basket, the journal goes untouched. I’ve...

There’s a particular kind of shift that happens in September. Summer has its own rhythm. Long days, open schedules, bare feet, late evenings, following the light and seeing where the day takes us. And then September arrives. The mornings are cooler. The calendars fill up. We begin gathering ourselves back in. I find this transition can feel harder to navigate than we sometimes expect. Autumn asks us to pull our energy inward, away from the free flow of summer, and there can be a heaviness to...

I just got home from a week of kayaking in Desolation Sound. The first few days were exactly what I needed. Paddle. Eat. Swim. Sleep. Repeat. Somewhere around the fourth day, I noticed something shift. Until then, I'd been happily taking it all in—the changing colours of the water, weathered driftwood, seals surfacing beside the kayak, the rhythm of paddling. It made me wonder how much of everyday life keeps us in the role of observer. We spend so much time taking things in. Even beautiful...