The Good Hour Issue 009: Summer of Sidequest
Just because summer is ending doesn’t mean you can’t go out on a creative sidequest.
Just because summer is ending doesn’t mean you can’t go out on a creative sidequest.
Table of Contents
- Here Ye, Here Ye
- We Want It
- New/Now/Next
- The Conversation: Lizz Aston
- One Small Practice
- Final Thought
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You run, you slide, you hit the bump and take a DIIIIIIIVE.
For all my elder millennials out there, surely you recall the grating theme song for Crocodile Mile, the trussed-up Slip ’N Slide that boasted a graceless exit through a croc’s mouth? This is late August to a tee, hose abandoned on the lawn. But summer isn’t over — it is simply time for a croc-free sidequest.
Sidequest: a loanword from the language of video games, a fancy little diversion from the main quest, possibly initiated by a chance meeting with a cat. Is this canon? Don’t ask me, I only know the Crocodile Mile theme song.
In this Good Hour, we’re easing out of summer with a sidequest mindset: small acts of creativity ideal for the beach, the block, and the backyard. Care to join us? #SidequestSummer!
Naomi Skwarna, Editor
We Want It:
Grab your fanny pack and a bag of Sour Patch Kids, here’s what we’re recommending for some, if not all, of your summer sidequest needs.
Camp Snap 2: Screen-Free Digital Camera
Why we like it: There’s a reason Camp Snap’s 2nd generation digital camera keeps selling out: this digital point-and-shoot has six film-like filters, a retro rangefinder design, and absolutely no apps required. All the joy and surprise of film with the ease of digital.
Why it might not be the right fit: Your bike shorts don’t have pockets.
Verdict: This ingenious little camera offers the best of digital and analog technology in one affordable and brightly-colored package.
Baggu Bath / Beach Towel
Why we like it: I live for Baggu. At last count, I had 16 in a range of shapes and colors. But do I have a beach towel covered in sea shells by the sea shore? No. And guess what, these towels (and other items) are on sale until August 25th.
Why it might not be the right fit: You prefer to drip-dry.
Verdict: DO IT.
Happy Medium Watercolor Beach Kit
Why we like it: This watercolor kit from NYC arts and crafts studio Happy Medium is so cute and pretty that you might be disinclined to actually paint with them. But no!! You must!
Why it might not be the right fit: You have a perfectly rational fear that you might bite them.
Verdict: Get ’em before they sell out again.
New/Now/Next
In the latest episode of the Noun Project podcast, Design Icons, Skillshare’s own Chris Piascik checks in to talk artistic inspiration and industry resilience.
Chris Piascik is a professional illustrator, author, and a Skillshare Top Teacher known for his playful style and 14-year-long daily drawing project. From a childhood obsession with album art to working with award-winning design agencies, Chris describes his career as largely accidental. What began as a simple practice of making and sharing personal work online led to a full-time career of freelance design work, including dream clients like Nike, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, and McDonald’s.
But Chris almost gave up before he even started. Get to know Chris a little better in this eye-opening episode – and then discover the joy of taking one of his classes, like Easy Animation for Illustrators with Adobe Fresco on the iPad.
Listen to the episode now on Spotify, Apple, and Youtube.
The Conversation: Lizz Aston
Toronto-based textile artist Lizz Aston has built a practice that moves between studios, gardens, classrooms, and city sidewalks. Over the past 17 years, she’s studied textiles at Sheridan, industrial design at the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD), and taught in programs at Sheridan, Toronto Metropolitan University, and OCAD.
Recently, she made a major shift: stepping away from institutional teaching to focus on her own work and a new design studio, Soft Practice, which gathers up all the informal roles she’s been playing for years.
Her artistic practice, likewise, embraces multiple disciplines and outcomes, rooted in natural dyeing, paper cutting, and fiber-based sculpture, but also in the less visible structures that support that work: themed weeks, slow experiments, and everyday rituals that let creativity coexist with a sustainable life.
On the subject of late summer sidequests, Lizz is an ideal guide. In her world, sidequests aren’t distractions from a “real” practice — they’re how the practice evolves.
Skillshare: How do you describe yourself and your art practice these days?
Lizz: I’d say I’m a textile artist. I’ve had my practice for about 17 years now, and it’s multidisciplinary in that I move between textiles, surface design, and object-making.
Right now I’m full time in my practice. Teaching full time is very rewarding, but it takes a lot out of you. I still teach workshops and I’m developing a series I’m really excited about, but the center of gravity is my studio work.
Can you tell me about your new project, Soft Practice?
Soft Practice is a design studio that turns my skills as a textile worker into clear, accessible services. Over the years I’ve done a lot of things informally: consulting, advising, mentoring young artists and designers, working with companies and interior designers on material sampling and custom fabrication, running corporate workshops, and doing brand activations.
I realized I needed to formalize that. Soft Practice is about creating defined ways for people to work with me. It’s easier for them to understand what I do, and more sustainable for me financially and energetically.
In a flower pounding workshop I took with you, you mentioned having a “studio in a bag” when you travel. What does that look like, and how does travel change your work?
I’ve moved back and forth between Toronto and Vancouver many times, so I’ve developed a system. I know what I want to explore while I’m away, and I pack a kit around that.
Sometimes I ship materials ahead; in the past I’ve even shipped pigment rocks across Canada. At airports, pigments from earthen materials always get flagged, so I put them in a clear bag labeled “ROCKS” in huge letters. They still pull it aside, but it helps.
My travel kit might include pre-mordanted fabric, embroidery materials, paper, and small containers. I’ve also brought small buckets in my suitcase with the intention of doing natural dyeing in hotels or Airbnbs. I’ll go for a walk, gather plants, then use the hotel kettle to heat water and steep them in those containers. I dye small fabric samples — more for pleasure and learning than for production.
Once in Vancouver, I created a kind of freeform quilt made from dye swatches of plants gathered in different neighborhoods. It became a tactile record of the city.
Your work feels very slow and process-based. How do you balance that with being productive and sustaining yourself?
It’s tricky. Walking is a huge part of my practice — for my mental health, but also for staying in relationship with the season and what’s growing. I recently moved, and the garden outside my window was planted by someone with a great sense of timing. Every two weeks something new emerges — ground cover, then lilacs, then roses. There are even dye plants I could forage. That kind of evolving backdrop is very nourishing.
At the same time, I’ve realized that constant multitasking is not healthy for me. I’m good at it, but it fragments my attention. This year I’ve been working with themed weeks instead. One week is all about surface design for a kite-making workshop I’m developing — testing materials, playing with pattern. Another week focuses on prototyping and flying those kites.
Since the beginning of the year, this approach has felt far more supportive and productive than trying to do five different modes of work in one day.
How do you practically organize those themed weeks?
I’m very analog. I use a physical planner called Many Moons by Sarah Faith Gottesdiener. It has space at the beginning of each month for goals, and at the end for reflection — what I actually did, what shifted, what surprised me.
Every day I write down what I worked on, almost like a studio journal. At the end of the month, I can look back and see patterns; what energized me, what drained me, what needs more time. It gives just enough structure, but I can still respond to whatever my practice is calling for — or to real-life interruptions — without feeling like I’ve “failed” a plan.
Can you share how late summer figures into your practice right now?
Late summer is when I’m drawn to wildflowers and dye plants that feel a bit unruly. I get very excited about things like tansy, acorns, wild amaranth, and sumac. Sumac is especially interesting because it’s both a dye material and a tannin source. You can use it to mordant fabric as well as to color it.
This is also peak indigo time. Indigo is incredibly special. You ferment the leaves in water and watch the liquid shift from a gentle blue to this vivid, almost antifreeze color as the pigment develops. The smell changes, too, from something light and fruity to something much funkier as it ferments.
Working with indigo is very sensory and intuitive. You’re constantly checking: Has this gone far enough? Too far? Does it need more time, more warmth, more oxygen? An indigo vat is like a living collaborator, more like a sourdough starter than a static material. You have to stay in relationship with it, and I think that’s part of what keeps me so engaged with this work.
Portrait by Sarah Bodri; Textile by Lizz Aston
One Small Practice
Walk, Notice, NamePractice: A 15–20-minute neighborhood walk focused on learning the names of the plants around you. Years into her textile practice, Lizz Aston realized she was surrounded by plants in the city — but didn’t have language for most of them. Getting to know them changed how she saw her environment and her work.Learning plant names is a gentle sidequest that builds familiarity with place, fuels curiosity, and lays the groundwork for future creative experiments, whether or not you ever start natural dyeing.
Find your starting point. Anywhere works: your block, a nearby park, even the trees on your commute.Bring a plant ID tool. Lizz uses the free version of PictureThis, and also recommends PlantSnap.Pick 3–5 plants to meet. Take a clear photo of each plant: leaves, flowers, overall form. Use the app to identify it and read a little about it (origin, habitat, etc.)Take one tiny note per plant. In a notebook or your phone, jot down: the plant’s name, where you saw it, and one detail you noticed (color, smell, shape, how it made you feel).Return to one favorite. On future walks, keep an eye out for that same plant. Notice how it changes over the season — new leaves, flowers, seed heads, color shifts.To accompany your experience, listen to Lizz’s playlist, Songs for Picking Flowers, even if you’re just taking pictures.
And if you’re inspired to take a natural dye class, try Casey Newman Gallagher’s Natural Dyes & Watercolor: Create Your Own Paints From Flowers.
Final Thought
End of summer can signal a moment both joyful and melancholy, as many transitions do. Is it the shorter days? The dropping temps? Now is the time to do the things you keep bumping to the end of your summer fun list. An outdoor movie or concert. A bike ride to nowhere. A trip to the ocean. Maybe you just want to crack those new watercolors you bought at the art store a few weeks ago. Don’t put it off. Now is the time to fly a kite at dusk.Happy questing, friends.Handmade kite and photo: Lizz Aston
The Good Hour
A biweekly dispatch for creative humans and their brains.
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