​NOT OPEN ON FRIDAY, NOV. 25!
We’re hoping you can come to our Artists’ Open Studios! We’ll be open on Saturdays and Sundays only this year: Nov. 26 + 27 and December 3 + 4, 10am – 5pm.
Sixty-six artists are showing their work and working methods, all around the Quiet Corner of Connecticut, so check out our website and flyers! This is a fabulous day trip: visit some studios, get a bite to eat, see more studios or a group show…
Open Today Signs will take you from Susan Morisette’s Sober Camel Pottery Studio, #42 (great work, totally worth checking it out!) at 200 Pole Bridge Rd., Woodstock, CT 06282 -- out to our place, Meb’s Kitchenwares, #39.
Park near the workshop, the first building on the right as you drive in.
Indoors: Masks please. We have extras… Meb has cancer, Tom is 81… If you came to the new shop last year, or to our old workshop in earlier times—please visit again. Lots of changes!
Downstairs: You can tour our off-grid systems: the workshop machinery, the inverter system and dust collection/expulsion. We’ll demo how we make our work—and also how Meb teaches spoon-making classes. I sincerely apologize that our space is not handicapped accessible—we’ll try to make it so in 2023. I’ll be happy to bring pieces downstairs or to your car for perusal.
Upstairs:  It’ll look like a working show—drying racks of work, our work displayed for sale or just for air-stirring in preparation for a spoon class! Also, a hangout with chairs and puzzles and stuff for kids to do. And lots of pieces and parts of trees, large and small, cool explorations of wood. Plus I have give-aways-- stuff I just can’t keep around anymore (from file folders to gloves to hankies) and extra flyers for the Open Studios tour. Also I’ll have gift certificates for spoon classes—a new class format is available!
Outside: If you like, you can tour (walk or just drive around) the homestead (Meb may or may not have the energy to guide you). 10 solar panels as you enter on the left, 4 panels in front of the house, SOO many projects underway: a roof over the cistern, a new roof for the original outhouse, the sawmill (maybe in operation!), the house’s south wall heat storage area underway, firewood piles everywhere, a shower (actually inside the house!), pathways through the Mountain Laurel*, a campfire to burn all the sticks that have blown down (depending on the weather). Just remember, this year, nothing is as neat or dust-free as we’d wish!
Hope to see you one of these weekends! Meb and Tom
*come back for an Open House in early June to see the Mountain Laurel in bloom. It’s quite a sight!

As promised, here's an old article from probably 10 or 15 years ago.  When we still lived in the cabin, before cancer for either of us, before strokes, before Tom turned 80. Before we built the house! It's called:
                                                  ARE YOU POOR?
The frozen earth crunches under my slippers, the forest nightlife hoots and howls, stars twinkle, crisp and clear through the leafless trees, my breath smokes out in puffs, and my headlamp sparkles the frost on the drooping mountain laurel as I shuffle along the path to the outhouse at 2am.  
 
When I tell people how we live—off the grid, no running water, tiny space-- the thing they’re most concerned about is the outhouse in winter.

Since June of 2000, my husband Tom and I have homesteaded 21 acres in the Connecticut woods--a mile past the last power pole. Before that--our first three years of marriage--we lived aboard a wooden sailboat in the Caribbean. Definitely off the grid. We enjoy the challenge and independence of a freeform lifestyle-- depending solely on ourselves for employment and entertainment; taking our safety and happiness into our own hands.
Now, we're not youngsters--during our time together, one or the other of us celebrated our 50th, 60th and 70th birthdays. We stay healthy by eating well and using our daily chores as quirky fitness regimes.
Between us we have 5 kids and 4 grandkids and vastly different former careers—Tom designed astronaut gloves for NASA, and built a successful injection molding business. I did union acting work and a cappella vocals in Boston. No residuals or annuities keep us going—we’ve started from zero many times. These days, together, we make hardwood kitchenwares and sell them at high end galleries and craft shows across the US. 
Compared to everyone we know, we live simply—a young friend asked boldly, “Are you poor?”
We’re certainly not rich, but we’re definitely not poor. And best of all—we’re not in debt. We don’t have a mortgage. We don’t have any credit cards and our savings fluctuate according to the project at hand. We just don't buy things if we can't afford them. We make do without the latest fashions (I actually prefer thrift store clothes and hand-knit sweaters traded for spoons), and we drive elderly, coddled vehicles. We grow organic produce when we can outsmart the hungry forest creatures. We're building a house with our own hands and sweat-- and we’re milling our own trees on a neighbors’ sawmill in exchange for work on their homestead.
And we’re rich in other aspects of life that can’t be bought: freedom from the abundance of rules, schedules and accepted schools of thought. Independence from the grid. The time and ability to explore our Selves and our relationship on our own terms. A freeform life.
But just because we live in the woods and off the electric grid doesn't mean that Rustic is our only option. We’ve made leaded diamond-pane, stained glass windows for our tiny cabin and because we worked on boats, our painted trim is high-gloss, marine-quality. We can watch movies streaming live and get emails using an air card and a power inverter. Our small space is filled with functional creations traded with friends in the craft world.
This is an honest lifestyle. As homesteaders, we have daily evidence of what we’ve accomplished and what we’ve avoided. If we're happy, it's because we've made fun situations happen. When we're broke, we neglected our business. If our gardens are invaded, we missed a hole in the fence. And when we're cozy and warm all winter, we stacked the hay around the cabin for insulation and chopped enough firewood.
At an age when our contemporaries are retired, resting on their previous careers, Tom and I are still exploring new territory—modern-day adventurers. We have a connection with the minute aspects of our daily lives. Friends and families watch our adventures with amusement, condescension, dismay--and some, I think, with a bit of envy.
We’ll never be rich in money, but, oh, we’re so rich in other ways: freedom, deep emotions, dreams and endless possibilities. It's not for everyone, our lifestyle, but it's the one that works for us.
And the 2 am trek to the winter outhouse? Honestly, it’s not a hindrance: It’s an ancient connection to primary functions; it’s a link to other outhouses around the world. And it’s an opportunity to track the stars, appreciate the moon-lit beauty, catch up with the owls and coyotes and add to our ever-growing packet of dreams.
Back in the cozy cabin, I refill the woodstove, snuggle into Tom’s warm body and head back to dreamland. 



 

Happy 2019 dear friends!
​
It’s really Meb here, two months cancer-free after a year of treatments! Many thanks to Allie, who kept communication going throughout: telling you about upcoming shows and other news of “importance”, keeping the website current, plus plugging us into the social media circuit.

At the end of 2017, we’d made a 5-year plan. For several years, I’d been anxious to retire or move on to a different career or sell my business or… something! Now that my chemo-brain is lessening, I’m able to see more clearly what’s really been nagging me; a year of illness brings slow insights.

What I realized during my enforced rest is that I LOVE making spoons, I ADORE teaching and I truly ENJOY meeting you all at shows. I don’t want to stop!

But I don’t love my cold, dark office at the workshop, nor the paperwork that ties me to it. I really dislike the frenzy before shows, prepping lots of work in too short a time. We both get exhausted setting up and breaking down shows. I’m truly not fond of production work (same thing over and over…). And I need to spend more time at our homestead—my life’s work, I feel. My purpose.

Over the year, we’ve come up with several solutions.

Now I’m doing more office work at home in a cozy sun-lit nook next to the wood stove. Here I can keep an eye on the exciting projects going on, lend a hand to Tom when needed and do my part in between the dratted paperwork.

Both Ethan (workshop assistant since 2006) and Pat (final inspection, oiling expert and bill payer since 2015) are taking on more responsibility, easing me out of many organizational roles so I can spend more time doing what I LOVE!

We’ll be doing fewer shows in 2019 and hope to hire more assistance for set-up and load-out. Our newly-indoor-accessible and temperature-regulated root cellar makes gardening a priority.

We’ve begun a schedule of more regular workshop hours during the week, building up stock to prevent the back-up just before shows. And we both want to make more funky, fun, elegant, unique, original work, maybe using some of the bits and stumps and knots and ….. that we’ve been saving for years!

With Allie’s help, I hope to make it easier to order on-line (yes, I know I said that last year....) if you’re not near a show.  

But our big news is that in 2019 we finally hope to build our workshop at home! We’ve had the foundation boulders laid since 2001, so we’re more than ready! We’re not sure when we can begin, therefore when we’ll finish, but that’s another reason for doing fewer shows.

​Of course the new workshop will be off-grid, necessitating more powerful systems than we have in the house. But this will make teaching, Open Studios and workshop visits more exciting as we’ll be able to show how amazing sustainable power is!

So that’s it! Our dreams for 2019. We hope you’ll be part of our future as we continue to explore the beauty of New England hardwoods and sustainable living!

With love and gratitude,
​