Arts & Crafts Extravaganza!

Phew! What a weekend!
We already mentioned that we opened our Shoppe, but we also managed to squeeze in some great arts & crafts in our spare time.

Arts: On Sunday we ventured out to the Headlands Center for the Arts to check out their Fall Open Studios. As always, we were in complete awe of the place. Such a gorgeous location, so peaceful, simple, and inspirational, the whole place has the look and feel of an Andrew Wyeth painting. It's 15 minutes (and a world away) from the Golden Gate Bridge. The Center offers residencies and studio space to both emerging and established artists and is located in and around a cluster of decommissioned military barracks and facilities. We were particularly excited to visit Alex Clausen, one of the artists whose work will be appearing in our next show at the Hardware Store gallery. (more about that later...)

Crafts: Then we headed over to the Craft Gym for a party celebrating the launch of Craft magazine. It was perfect for us since we've been looking forward to checking out both the Gym and the magazine. The Gym looks like a ton of fun, they've got a great space and they offer lots of cool classes for all sorts of DIY-ing. The magazine looks fantastic too. It's beautifully produced, nice and thick, and since it's from the folks who brought us MAKE, we weren't surprised to find it filled with lots of crafty, smart projects. Some of the more ambitious ones remind me of the early days of the DIY movement when "Doing It Yourself" was less about making a wallet out of duct tape, and more about laying the foundation for your house. Luckily they've got a range of projects for all interests and skill levels. We were excited to see stories about some of the fun stuffed we've obsessed over here like crocheting chaos, loco gocco-ing, and the beaded wonderlands of Liza Lou.