Slow Roll

a few things that made me slow down this month.

Pencil & paper

Picking up a plain old pencil this month has got me feeling all nostalgic. When I was younger, it took a lot less to keep me engaged. I could draw for hours with just the gray graphite and paper to keep me company. But these days… it’s harder. Our attention is getting pulled in hundreds of directions every hour, and I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling it in my bones. I’m craving things that take flow and focus. This is where drawing comes in. When there is nothing, not even colour, to kidnap your focus. All you have to do is follow where the light and shade falls.

A bonus prompt for you to write or think about: what material from your childhood deserves revisiting?

The colour red

I have always been an earthy person. I love muddy earthtones. Washed out yellow. Autumnal browns. Terracotta orange. But lately something has been happening. I’ve been drawn to a colour I hardly ever think about, and would never have thought to wear. Red. Bright, jewel, cherry red. The only reason I mention this is because I think it signifies a shift. An awakening. And I think it means that summer is here.

Our studio playlist

If you don’t already follow our studio playlist, you can find it here. It’s an integral part of our workshop atmosphere—the backdrop that carries us through the flow of each session. You could kind of think of it as the beating heart of the studio. These are the songs that accompany quiet repair work, help settle focus, and offer a steady presence throughout the day.

One artist who appears multiple times is Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou. Her piano compositions bring a distinctive clarity and calm to the space. If you’re not familiar with her hauntingly beautiful music, she was a classically trained Ethiopian pianist from an aristocratic background who later became a nun. Her recordings, often composed in solitude, have a spare, expressive quality that suits the rhythm of our practice well. If you’re curious, you can listen to her work here.

Colour drenching

You can often find me with a new colour theory book, and I am a strong believer in using pigment and colour to reflect feeling and heighten senses. If this is your first time hearing the term, Colour drenching is an interior design technique where a single color is used across an entire space—walls, ceilings, trim, and even furniture—to create a cozy, immersive effect. It has the overall impact of eliminating contrast, allowing the colour to dominate and set a specific mood. It can be calming or a bit bold, but either way, it’s something I have become deeply preoccupied with. And now I cannot stop obsessing over painting the ceiling in my bedroom to match my terracotta walls.

FEAR by Kahlil Gibran

It is said that before entering the sea

a river trembles with fear.

She looks back at the path she has traveled,

from the peaks of the mountains,

the long winding road crossing forests and villages.

And in front of her,

she sees an ocean so vast,

that to enter

there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.

But there is no other way.

The river can not go back.

Nobody can go back.

To go back is impossible in existence.

The river needs to take the risk

of entering the ocean

because only then will fear disappear,

because that’s where the river will know

it’s not about disappearing into the ocean,

but of becoming the ocean.

Heat waves

We are finally entering that point of the year when the heat is becoming a little… oppressive. I find this to be the perfect time to reset. There are a couple of natural ‘reset’ moments that happen throughout the year. That weird period between Christmas and new year is another one of these liminal periods. Everything slows down in certain ways, but sometimes we are reluctant to fully relax into it. This year I have been preparing nervously for this period. Knowing that things would slow down, I have been preparing the studio for a mini fallow period come late July. Well, I would say this heat has expedited this slowing down process. But rather than resist it, I’m choosing to lean in. The studio will be quieter for a little while, and that’s by design. There’s something valuable in stepping back—letting the pace drop, the dust settle, and space open up for reflection or simply rest. Slowing down isn’t a disruption; it’s an essential part of the rhythm. This upcoming quarter, between July and the end of September, I’m going to make sure I take full advantage of the slow, hot days, and really lean into rest.

In for Dinner

Theres something about community. In fact, it’s probably in large part why I love running our weekly workshops. I go on and on about how lucky I am to have new faces in the studio every week. So it’s really special when I get to follow along with some of our previous attendees in the amazing projects they are working on. I was fortunate to have Rosie Kellet in one of our kintsugi repair sessions a while back, and she mentioned that she was finishing up her cookbook which would be published this year. Well friends, it’s on shelves, and it’s such a beaut. You can find it here. But I think what i love so much about Rosie’s work, is that she folds her communal living ethos so effortlessly into her work. She lives with a group, and by weekly communal cooking, they manage to create all these incredible, inspiring recipes, and save tonnes of money doing it. I don’t know about you, but I truly feel with the cost of living, and the amount of waste we need to contend with creating, this kind of alternative living scenario is the way of the future.

Community. Health. Sustainability. Sign me up.