2024 holiday season was overwhelming because I was juggling market season with sudden hospice care for my 7.5 year old corgi, Dory. He passed from cancer complications on the 12th of December, which also happened to be my birthday. We were and still are completely devastated. I was able to rally and finish up my last show of the year a few days later at my first ever Market of the Beast which went very well. I also vended at another Beelzebub's Bazaar and added on an event at The Coffin Club's Dark Market in the weeks before.
Since then we were able to host family for the holidays, which was a welcome distraction from our grief. After that I have otherwise been out of the pottery studio and have been trying to take care of my mental health. I've been taking the time to catch up on tv shows and politics while working on fiber projects. I have finished up two sweaters in the month of January and just started a knitted blanket for my new niece that is due in March. I've also been teaching myself Japanese because we are planning a family trip there in the near future.
Now that it's February I plan on getting a lot of administrative work done. This will include a website revamp and possibly a new logo. I also plan to clean up my indoor office and then move on to cleaning up the pottery studio. Once the studio is clean and the website is updated, I will start taking pictures and listing pieces for sale in my online shop.
Oddities and Curiosities Expo has welcomed me back for another show this year in Portland, Oregon on October 25-26, 2025! Applications for other spring and summer markets are opening up now, I'm still making plans on what I want to apply to. I have some travel plans that need to be made in Spring and Summer, so it is likely I will not be doing any in-person markets until August or September at the earliest. In the meantime, once my online shop is up and running it will stay up as long as there are pieces available to sell.
I will be live streaming on Tiktok, Twitch and Youtube when I am in the studio and I'm hoping to start making more educational pottery video and blog content. You can also find me over at Bluesky. I also have a Lemon8 and plan on making accounts on Neptune and Flashes as soon as they become available to the public. All of my short form content will be the same so pick whatever you use and find me there @gigijohnstonart