Awl Things Small

We love small things!

We are (hopefully!) about to embark on some very big things again, so until then, we thought we’d share some of our smallest treasures: Things Made from scraps of other Things Made, treasures that fit into other treasures, and objects that are simply small.

Solvitur Ambulando Ring
All of our jewelry is made from reclaimed gold, silver, and bronze.

Scraplings Trio made from Sendak Cut-Offs

Our Smallest Bags

Pipit Totes

Small Hunter Satchel and (some Treasures that stop being small)

Substack and YouTube

We’ve been making a lot more for YouTube and Substack!

We have more process to share, along with the church transformation, if all goes well. Let us know you are enjoying our YouTube videos by subscribing to our channel!

Everywhere Astonishments

I’m Not Afraid on Netflix was one of the best shows I’ve seen in a long time. (tbf I don’t watch much.) It was so, so beautiful and compelling, and horrifying. And these kids were astonishing!

The Land I’ve Neglected.

Every year, for eight years, for longer, I’ve moved through the plants and the soil on this land, and the movement planted seeds in me. August comes, and I feel defeated, but this year is worse. I’ve found Bindweed I’ve never seen before. I’ve been sliced by new grasses. My plants are all so tall, and so droopy, from all of the happy invasives, from all of the water, from all of the sun.

It is grey and beautiful today. I tore at the bindweed. At the carpet of another. At the stiltgrass. I so long for the church and its small batch of porous earth. And the biggening of that – but only so much for there is very little of it. I write from the church steps. Traffic passes and it is loud. And I know I am of this world.

DISCOVER TREASURES

Sendak Nutshell in Truffle

Field Trip

Walter and I have been wanting to cast bigger things, and so finally visited a local business to start the conversation. The building is one of my favourites in the area. The land was purchased by the current owner’s grandfather in the 1940s, when our new church was being built. I love the tangle of time. Some photographs for now.

The Blackening...

Substack and YouTube

We’ve been making a lot more for YouTube and Substack lately. Søren has joined Ashley and me in the video-making and will keep at it while he’s at SCAD!

We have more process to share, along with the church transformation, if all goes well. Let us know you are enjoying our YouTube videos by subscribing to our channel!

Your Art Using OUr Treasures

More videos, more art — keep sharing!

Photograph by @annmarie.artworks

Everywhere Ashtonishments

Things found in hidden spaces (base board)
gregory Allan Isakov
church progress and soren video?

Gregory Alan Isakov last night. This summer's music has been exquisite.

Church, Farm & Family

Oh, life takes us on miraculous twists and turns. The biggening and the smallening. The wobbling, the breaking. There is a church in West Chester that is sitting empty and we hope to change that soon! Our offer was accepted, now we trudge through zoning and inspection.

On tenterhooks over here!

We have lots and lots of ideas and will wait to share them when all is clear. For now, more peeks into this spectacular little sweetie in the borough of West Chester. It is filled with windows, but very empty of pews and treasure, sniff.

I am hoping the bells are in the belfry.

Many of us at Peg and Awl went to Ireland this summer, independent of each other’s plans! Natalie made a 6" Anselm journal in the car with this sweet alteration. I cannot wait to see it finished!

Substack and YouTube

We’ve been making a lot more for YouTube and Substack lately. Søren has joined Ashley and me in the video-making and will keep at it while he’s at SCAD!

We have more process to share, along with the church transformation, if all goes well. Let us know you are enjoying our YouTube videos by subscribing to our channel!

Everywhere Astonishments

Grandma and Renee’s Farm. More about this on Substack!

Last Week’s Newsletter!

Thank you for your warm reception of last weekend’s Weathered Blues Of a Kind collection, which sold out quickly!

PS: We are working on the next collection that will be available sometime in October.
PPS: We give two heads-ups in newsletters prior to the drop.

LAST WEEK’S NEWSLETTER

NEW Weathered Blues Collection

It has been a long time since we’ve enveloped ourselves in blue. When we started Peg and Awl, we were surrounded by ticking, indigo, and every shade of blue we could find. Then I grew weary and tucked them away for a while – a long while.

But blue has found its way back.

This collection is full of weathered blues and well-loved things: pouches made from orphaned quilt blocks, bags sewn from vintage textiles, lots and lots of tins, money bag Sendaks, and a Dream Journal Bundle for collecting whatever memories of the night may surface.

BROWSE THE COLLECTION SIGNUP TO BE NOTIFIED OF FUTURE OF A KINDS

Dream Journal Pouches!

We showed you how to make a dream journal, but many of you asked us to make them for you! So we decided to make some dream journal bundles: we bind the book, you add the dreams!

Graphite tin, eraser, and tortillon, cozily contained in an antique quilt block pouch with a 6x9 Dream Journal.

Weathered Blue Dream Journal Bundle

Sendaks, Bags and Pouches

Classic Sendak

Nutshell Pile

Tinned Sketchbooks + Other Art Supplies

Never enough tins! We’ve made more clean-cut watercolour sheets to tuck into vintage tins for your petite paintings, and more tinned bookbinding kits, including a new shape, and blue scrap bundles!

Treasures straight from the flea market

Collections Explained

If you’ve been following along with us for a while, you may have noticed that not all launches are the same – some products stay for years, some fly off the shelves, and others fall somewhere in between. Here are some explanations to distinguish between our various collection types.

Standard Collections: Everything in our standard collections will be ongoing until we decide to stop making them! They may include some vintage or antique materials, (ex. journal fabric lining) but these details will vary subtly to ensure their ongoingness.

Small Batch Collections: Limited batches incorporating vintage or antique materials where larger batches can be made, but are not infinite! The quantity ranges, but we aim for minimum of 100 in these collections.

Of a Kind Collections: Limited batches incorporating vintage or antique materials. Each object will be limited from 1–20 items depending upon our findings.

Substack + YouTube

It is Storming with Thunder

Happy 18-year anniversary to us!
Lives built on happenstance and spontaneity —

Walter and I made quick decisions when we met, including making two humans, travelling, getting married in Iceland, and starting Peg and Awl — all within two and a half years. And for one of those years, Walter was in Iraq with the military.

From my journal shortly after meeting him.

It is
“There are few things as comforting as well-linked humans.”

Then,
“It is true that I will always love thunderstorms. I will also love perfectly falling drops of music and certain walks.”

And,
“At the seashore again, a perfect day. We barely know each other (I say, I say) but we talk about faraway things. We decided to see the world by sea. We need to figure out how, now.”

The Guests Arrived, One by One

Our Journaling Tutorials, Gathered

Having one page left in my current journal, I must make a new one. I shall record.

Until then, we’ve gathered some of our favorite journaling how-tos – ways to begin, continue, collect, and keep your own pages. And if you aren’t inspired to make your own (or need one sooner), we always have some in our shop.

SHOP JOURNAL COLLECTION

New Blue Of a Kinds in the Works!

I over-blued myself in the early days of Peg and Awl and shelved it for a long time. Happy to have them back! This collection will drop next Saturday, August 8, at 10ish am EST!

Nutshells!

Back in Stock!

Scraplings, made from the leftovers from Sendaks, are back in stock along with the discontinued Helen Painter’s Palette as we’ve made a bunch for Jackson’s Art and have a few left over:)

Helen Painter’s Palette

Substack

Everywhere Astonishments

Which Art Roll Shall I Get?

Back at home, we are inundated with our own ideas and desires. There is so much to do, and so much to want to do. There has been lots of experimenting this summer:

All the Sizes!

The Sendak that started it all!

Thoughts While Hiking

“The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.”
–Robert Henri

Thoughts and ideas steadily flow when you’re in the mountains. It may be the elevation, or the isolation, or the walking. Even with each foot fall, weighed down by heavy packs and the slow, earthy, grounding act of hiking, there is an otherworldy transformation at work. As my fellow travelers and I trekked over mountain passes and into lake-spotted basins, living by the adage of Robert Henri grew more and more effortless.

I have been dreaming of through hiking the Pacific Crest Trail with my Scout Plein Air box in tow, walking, painting and camping somewhere new each day. So when I realized the trail I was actually backpacking, converged and shared paths with the John Muir Trail and the PCT, I was ecstatic! It was only a few miles that my current path, Rae Lakes Loop, traversed alongside those two famed walkways, but my mind was brimming with ideas.

I dreamt of a series of paintings chronicling a hike through the majesty and untamed beauty of the Sierra Nevada mountain range and beyond. I would start with the John Muir Trail, all 211 miles, and after would find a local coffee shop or gallery to show the work. Maybe I would compile a book of the adventure with trail logs, notes, portraits of fellow travelers, nature sketches, journal entries! How would I pack all my supplies for that long trek? How would I store the wet canvases after the four slots in my Scout box were full? How would I be able to stay on course and not be distracted by something new to paint at every bend? If all went well the PCT would be next!

–Walter

“In every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks.” –John Muir

Which Art Roll Shall I Get?

Back at home, we are inundated with our own ideas and desires. There is so much to do, and so much to want to do. There has been lots of experimenting this summer:

All the Sizes!

The Sendak that started it all!

New Blue Of a Kinds in the Works!

Our next collection is in the works. We will share the date and time of the drop next week!

Orphan Square Bundles

Substack and YouTube

Watch on YouTube

Everywhere Astonishments

I had the pleasure of riding on the back of a motorcycle this week. Something I haven’t done in years. More, please. Also, I’ve been in pen purgatory for a long time as I tried to find a new favourite. I returned to my tried and true: A Vintage Rapidograph pen. They need all the TLC, but worth it. They have a truly thin line and ink that lasts for days!

My face poison ivy has kept me out of the pond and the sun this week, much to my sorrow and sleeplessness. But it is healing and I am ready to jump in!

Life, Uncooperative, is Still Beautiful

Under an uncanny sky, smoke drifting down from wildfires in Canada, life has carried on around the pond in all its unruly abundance.

The heat has brought on the stinkiest algae bloom, earning me my title of Ungardener once again. Each day I am in pond, net in hand, gathering long strands and cauliflower blooms.

I empty the net on a rock and sift through finding tiny surprises: tadpoles with varying numbers of limbs, and salamander larvae wriggling. All are delighted to return to the water. The bee balm has exploded and is alive with critters, including a hummingbird moth again. A daytime bat circled above me whilst in the pond, swooping low for a drink.

In the small milkweed patch I claimed years ago from incessant mowing, a monarch flits about.

Oh, and I have weeping poison ivy on my face.

Classic Sendak is back on my desk!

Stacks of Anselms

Chaos and Small Victories

The Scout is Out Again!

Meanwhile, on their annual canoeing trip at the Delaware Water Gap, the boys and men of the family fish and chatter. Walter, in setting up his Scout before the storm blew in, dropped it into the river.

A little river baptism!

P.S. I forgot to mention that in Ireland, his pannier popped off over a bump, hurling his Scout into the road where it bounced multiple times. It wasn't built with these particular experiences in mind — but the Scout endures!

SHOP THE SCOUT

A Few Hours Closer to Canada, the Sky is Clear!

Substack and YouTube

Watch on YouTube

Everywhere Astonishments

“If we don’t really, in our time, have an awareness of what we lost then, what is it we’ve lost? – Anthony Metivier in conversation with Rick Rubin

Widow’s Bay Looking forward to Episode 8 tonight:)

@ehaidle mushroom 🍄

This Summer We Play!

Plein Air Painting as a kind of journaling. Walter has been painting wherever we travel since making the first Scout Box in 2017! I would love to see a wall of the paintings – that would be an incredible installation that would mark our adventures, along with his progress. But he’s given some away to the people we’ve spent time with traveling, and others he’s sold. So we have photographs. So many photographs of so many things.

Walter painted.

When travelling especially, I am reminded of our Smallness.

In the Workshops

Back at home, we are inundated with our own ideas and desires. There is so much to do, and so much to want to do. There has been lots of experimenting this summer:

Søren is working with me and Ashley on videos and helping out with jewelry.

Silas is spending his time in the woodshop with the lathe working through bowl designs from scrap wood.

Søren at the Pier with His Rogue

Walter’s Pouches

We’ve made a new batch of Writer’s Pouches from scrap and have used up the rest of our Red Maple and Almond — the last are available now along with our regular colours.

Stationery on the Go! (I wrote SO many letters in Ireland!)

Returning to an Old Project, Alas

I need a project to focus and to widdle away on and have returned to a favourite I put on pause at a few years ago. It still holds up and I must navigate what I don’t know. Little By Little Makes a Lot. Here I go. I'll share progress @beingmargauxkent For now, enjoy a colourful Classic Sendak!

Classic Sendak is back on my desk.

Substack and YouTube

Everywhere Astonishments

Podcasts enjoyed during our trip:

• Criminal, always a favourite. We listened to this a lot whilst biking.
• Huberman Podcast - Ido Portal I loved this and related so much to moving outside of a formula or ciriculum for a kind of freedom and agililty of the mind and body. I took pages of notes on the airplane.
• Diary of a CEO — Dr. Martin Picard Mitochondria Scientist talks about energy, a subject I am desperate to learn more about.

Colour has come to the once invaded-only hill, but it is still incredibly overwhelming, the rate at which the plants I am ungardening grow. Alas, a view from a stilt-grass-pulling pause.

Movement and Celebration

We biked and hiked and explored along the coast and up and down the hills and mountains of County Kerry in Western Ireland. I’ve not yet taken it all in, though I’ve taken notes.

I am on Irish time still, not quite ready to be home and navigate the mess I left for myself and we are having a pond party today, so I must jump into the preparation hustle!

Here, a little green from our last two weeks. I look forward to sorting through thoughts and journals and letters and voice memos on a good long walk here in the thick heat of Pennsylvania soon.

Soggy Great Blasket Island

Our Favourite Recent Reviews

Thank you, always, for your reviews! It is our connection with you and your treasures after we’ve set them free. We love reading through them as they come in daily with personal notes and tales of your adventures. Keep them coming!

Wyeth Plein Air Box

A wise investment!

“I am not an experienced plein air painter. But this box has made it so easy to just go out and paint. Everything I need in one beautiful, sturdy box. Although it is a bit heavy, I like how it allows me to paint larger. I also primarily paint in watercolor and I haven’t had any issues with the kit. I love how you can arrange the easel at any angle. Moreover, I’m finding that it is completely transforming my practice. I just love it so! The only problem is now I want to bring it everywhere I go. And you do need to invest in a high quality travel tripod so between the box and the tripod it is definitely an investment. But one I’m finding is totally worth it.” –Akane Z.

Classic Sendak Artist Roll

The best gift I ever gave myself was my Sendak Artist Roll

“I have been an artist all my life and was a traveling artist for over two decades. I taught classes at retreats, art stores, and conventions. I spent years trying every type of organizational products for my art supplies. Some worked better than others, but none were the perfect answer for my organizational needs. I needed my supplies to stay in place and be easily accessible as I was teaching. When I saw the Sendak I thought it looked promising and I ordered one that day. My Sendak met all my needs and expectations. I love that my supplies stay where they are put and so easily at hand. Also I no longer waste time checking that my treasured tools are safe. It saves my time from digging for what I need and confidence in knowing it is easily at hand.” –Rebecca K.

I had a great conversation with Miss mustard seed. Read here!

Substack + YouTube

Everywhere Astonishments

Ashley, my sister-in-law and partner in newsletters and videos and more here at Peg and Awl, has moved to an old farm with her family. I love seeing it come to life!