so it's been a great few days with the craft shows.

I am showing you a collage of my weekend at the second storie show - to sum it up - great people - new friends - thank you to everyone who came by to say hi or to buy a little something. It was a successful show for us. I stayed at a lovely place on a huge piece of land. the last images is the yummy breakfast we were treated to by the organizers. I felt welcomed and so well taken cared of. thanks again second storie team!

hi everyone - hope you had a nice weekend, nikole and I are back from rochester safe and sound - what a wonderful show it was - I will tell you more about it tomorrow. I missed these sweet faces. the winner of giveaway no. 5 is silvia - congratulations! please email me your shipping address. thanks again everyone for your kind words. off to cut, print and sewwwww!!

giveaway no.4 goes to geninne. congratulations!! send me an email with your shipping address. this time of year is so busy - at the end of it all I think I will enjoy relaxation in a big way. john was at my booth today and I was home with the kids and busy sewing - it was a good day until they both started fighting over a piece of sand paper - silly? piper learned to say "mine" and that word is very troubling to lliam, because she grabs everything and says "mine!" and he tries to reason with her and she doesn't reason well and well it gets crazy. I managed to get what I needed done and went by to see john the last hour of the show and we had a pretty amazing day. a big thank you to all of you who came by - sorry I wasn't there to chat. as you read this I am probably getting ready for rochester for the second storie show - come by if your in the hood.

I forgot to wish all my american friends a happy thanksgiving.

giveaway no. 5 (linen wall art with a sweet little bird on a pile of seeds 12 x 12 in.) this will be the last giveaway - I hope you enjoyed visiting - I am sorry I can't give away more gifts - I appreciate all of your support. please leave me a comment by sunday november 28th at 10pm and I will announce a winner on monday morning.

good luck and have a beautiful weekend!

giveaway no. 3 goes to lime green. congratulations! please email me - thanks again for all your lovely comments on our new animal print. today is the first day of the one of a kind show - while setting up I walked by some really nice booths - if your in toronto come check it out - I think buying handmade is the best!giveaway no.4 (oblong triangle pillow on a nice light coloured 100% linen 12 x18 in.- insert not included) - please leave me a comment before 10pm today and I will announce a winner tomorrow. be sure to visit again - I will have one more giveaway to announce on friday.

good luck! and enjoy your day.

giveaway no. 2 goes to Marie B - congratulations! - please email me with your shipping address, thanks everyone for taking out the time to leave me a comment - I appreciate them. the majority of our animal prints are drawn by john - this porcupine that I gave you a peek awhile ago has finally been printed and I adore this little fella. I chose this fresh green because it gave the shirt a retro feel which I like. I am still making work - our move in went well and it was nice to see familiar faces - I re-designed my booth to maximize my display area - john is very helpful in this area.

giveaway no.3 (porcupine organic cotton tee - size 2)- please leave a comment before 10pm eastern standard time and a winner will be announced tomorrow. thanks and good luck!

giveaway no.1 goes to ninimakes - congratulations! please email me your shipping address. today is damp, grey and rainey - we are setting up for the ooak show which starts in a few days. I am also packing my bags for rochester at the end of the week - so I won't be at the booth on the weekend - you can come by and say "hi" to john. giveaway no.2 (three lovely tea towels) made from a wonderful hemp and organic cotton fabric. you have till 10pm today to leave a comment - good luck!

hi everyone - I hope your weekend was enjoyable - john and I spending long days working away - feeling good about our progress. So I mentioned this month is the celebration of eight years of bookhou and that I would celebrate with a week of giveaways - a token of my appreciation for your kindness and support. I was taking a trip down memory lane thinking about my own journey into making handmade goods. I remember always being a maker and when I decided to make things to sell I was a teenager making jewellery to sell to my friends and when I first started selling to shops I did stationery goods and soon after that I started to incorporate sewing and then screen printing. my making journey felt complete when I met john and we shared the same passion for handmade clean and simple designs. I don't feel that eight years is a long time - I feel like we just started and I feel that our little business will continue to grow and flourish along with us. giveaway no.1 (tree tea cosie) - you will have till 10pm (eastern standard time) on each giveaway to leave a comment and the winner will be announced on the following day along with a new giveaway. you can enter every giveaway, but if your name is selected more than once - it will go to the next person selected. I am only doing this so that I can give more people a chance to win. I hope you understand. good luck!

a quick hello - thanks for all your comments! - congratulations to the winners above! please email me.

this sperm whale is a peek at our new animal. see you back here tomorrow.

when piper goes for a walk without me - she brings back gifts in the form of leaves and little rocks. I have a pile of leaves and one day while sitting at my work table I decided to cut it up to create my own shape. I showed it to piper and she loved it - she carried it around in the shop, but the leaf was brittle and it all crumpled and disappeared - the only memory of it - is in the form of this photograph. it's getting chilly here - feeling like winter is around the corner. a week from today nikole and I will be heading to rochester, new york for the second storie indie market - a wonderful group of makers. more info here. don't forget that next week will be a week of giveaways - I will fill you in on the details later.

enjoy a weekend of relaxation it will be crazy busy here at the bookhou studio so relax for me big hugs xx

here's my new bag - well it's a new print - I had done this design as one of my very first bags I made and I haven't made them for awhile and I thought why not let them have a return. I had shown you this style awhile ago and I didn't make them as quickly as I had hope. I will have these for sale at the upcoming shows as well as the shop.

to get the giveaway spirit going - the One of a Kind Show has generously donated 5 pairs of tickets. I am going to be doing some special things at the show - you heard about the printing workshop, as well I will be doing a guest lecture talking about our business as part of their education component and I will also be doing three one hour printing demos in their studio area. so if you are able to attend the show and you would like a pair of tickets - please leave me a comment by saturday, november 20th at 10pm and I will announce 5 winners on sunday morning. wow the show will be starting in a week (okay trying not to panic).

here's a look at our new storage basket - I've been asked a lot of times to put handles on our large storage boxes, but I was never a fan of just adding handles or cutting openings in the fabric - so this idea came from the handle shapes on grocery bags. I think this design will be a nice companion to our very popular small storage box. I really like how it turned out and you can buy this design here. I will show you images later of more prints as well as a new bag that I will show you tomorrow. I will also have them available in our brick and mortar shop as well as the upcoming holiday craft shows.

I see beauty all around me - enjoying the shapes and tones of shadows

hi everyone! - hope you had a relaxing and creative weekend.

our lliam was sick for most of the weekend and he's now on the mend, but lil p is now got the sniffles - what is up with this rotating cold/flu thing. I hope I don't get sick - too much work ahead of me. well I got a few letterpress jobs to show you - sort of. the wedding invite I will show more pics when everyone gets them. it involved pine cones - how sweet - and I got to use the beautiful st. armand paper - it was a real pleasure to print on it and was nice to have a break from the lettra paper. I also did some custom business cards in the style of our note cards. I'm having fun with putting washi tape on e v e r ything. there's also a picture of this cut off from the log piles I got and it's waiting to be turned into something. also friends in rochester and montreal - I will be taking a road trip with my wares to visit you soon.

next week celebrates eight years of bookhou I am thinking of having a giveaway each day - is that too insane?

enjoy your day!

happy friday everyone! the window scarves are all made and ready. I only have 9 in this e d i t i o n. this scarf is a nice light weight cotton scarf digitally printed with my photograph. they will be up on the b.a.h. etsy shop at 12pm eastern standard time. I couldn't resist posting this photo of piper - she warms my heart.

happy weekend everyone - enjoy the sunshine.

I just started my own pinterest - more images to come - you can find the link on my sidebar.

I would describe my family as a real family - we are together a lot of the time - we enjoy each others company and we take pride in the things we do. some random images from the studio -we were having a still life day and the kids picked a few objects to draw - piper mostly enjoyed drawing dots. I love my fingerless gloves made by anna zygowski - I wear them while I'm cutting and sewing - and clayton's beautiful glass bowls soaking in the beautiful southern light that comes through the storefront windows. thanks to everyone who bought the new tea towel yesterday and other goodies in our online shop. your support is what makes everything we do here matter.

p.s. I love having my studio and shop together

here is the finished product from john's original drawings. it is called autumn tea towel - we will have them for sale here and here.

I hope you like them as much as we do - I think these will be a hit.

john retrofitted this type tray for me to display my snap wallets - it works so well - it's a good way to catch customers attention when it is displayed upright. the past week has been so busy with the sale of our calendar tea towel - it was featured on decor8 as part of the 2011 calendar round up. thanks to everyone who bought one. I am starting to use the linen selvage that I cut off as ribbon. yesterday I got a super duper bargain on a bag full of washi tape from dwr - thanks cheryl for the tip. so I will probably start using the tape for the packaging of our online sales.

hope you all had a beautiful weekend - we had a productive weekend and I can't wait to show you what we've been up to - more tomorrow and the next days. thanks so much for taking out the time to leave such nice comments -the giveaway goes to comment no.9 pebbledash - congratulations!! please email me with your shipping info. not to fret I will have another giveaway soon and it will be for three winners. a little story - when I graduated from grad school I moved to montreal to start my art career - it was soon halted with the reality of not being able to speak fluent french and having to get a job washing windows. the highlight of this job was I got to spend the day at Betty Goodwin's house/studio - being around her art and her beautiful art collection was really quite amazing. She has her work along with Eva Hesse + Agnes Martin at the AGO till january. Goodwin's father was a tailor and she did a series of vests and other garments as etchings and I find the construction of these garments so meticulous and she was able to capture that as well as the shapes and lines. Goodwin died a few years ago at the age of 85 three weeks after her husband of 60 years died. She also had a late start in her art career and what she accomplished in that time was really inspiring.

looking for something to make this weekend? check out my paper garland tutorial over at poppytalk. thanks jan!

hello friends and happy friday!

I feel like my week just begun - I don't have classes on the weekend and feel that it will be a good solid two days to get caught up with my production for ooak. a few days ago I had 800 posts. I feel I should celebrate with a giveaway - I appreciate all of you for visiting me here. the giveaway is for a cotton canvas market bag in a light mustard colour and the new sky scarf - as well these two small adorable storage containers. leave me a comment and you will have till sunday at 10pm, the winner will be announced on monday.

have an amazing weekend and good luck!

my two boys co-operating and modeling for me. two new scarves. the red one is a similar design that I did a few years ago - but for this one I thought I would go with a large print of the hare. lliam looks so much like john in these photos. the second one is a wool scarf that was woven in italy. I normally don't like wool around my neck, but this one is quite comfortable. available in the b.a.h. shop.

come back tomorrow for a giveaway!