Most of what I make starts because I’m trying to capture something. A place I don’t want to forget. A smell that reminds me of someone. The feeling of coming home soaked after being out in the rain, peeling off wet layers and warming up again.

Summer in Tofino is beautifully busy, but I really love when the rain comes back. Life gets smaller in a way I like. We cook more. Baths get longer. There’s usually something simmering on the stove, something curing on the soap racks and a candle burning somewhere in the house. The studio gets busier while everything outside seems to slow down.

This time of year, I want smoke and cedar, coffee and spice. I even broke my seven-year streak of never making a pumpkin candle — because the only one I really wanted to make was one that smelled like my Grandma’s pie.

And I want to share more than what’s coming off the studio shelves, too. Apple crumble made with Canadian-grown Honeycrisp apples, a batch of fire cider, and more recipes + little pieces of our life here as the weather turns.

Because The Hobbyist was never really supposed to be just a soap and candle company. It’s about making things. Using your hands. Paying attention to where you live and what’s in season. Taking ordinary things and giving them a little more care.

Things we’re making, burning, eating + reaching for as the rain comes back. Come inside and see what's seasonal. 

I grew up on Vancouver Island surrounded by women who made things with their hands.

My mum, my nan, my sisters, my aunties. Some of my earliest memories are of sitting around tables with them, making something out of whatever was in front of us. We canned, pickled, baked, sewed and foraged. My nan had a tickle trunk under her stairs, filled with craft supplies for making costumes, hand puppets or whatever our next creative idea happened to be.

Our homes were places where women gathered, created, figured things out and passed things down.

Nobody called it creativity or craftsmanship. It was simply part of how we lived.

I don’t think I understood until much later just how deeply that way of growing up shaped me.