A Not Terribly Succinct History of Wyrding Studios

Wyrding Studios exists in a state of continuous evolution. It began in 2003 when I took up wireworking, became my full-time job on a folding table in a corner of my Manhattan apartment in 2005, and spent a year traveling the country in an RV before settling in New Hampshire in 2007. I have worked out of basements, bedrooms, on cross-country trains and kitchen tables. I sold jewelry online since before Etsy existed, and at last count I'd made well over 10,000 pieces of jewelry.

Some years I ran everything single-handedly, some years I had marvelous assistants; I spent all of 2011 working with a baby slung on my back or sprawled across my lap. These days, it's just me, with occasional "help" from one or more small children and/or cats. (The children are marginally more helpful.)

I am, in no particular order, a metalworker, a Rhysling-nominated performance poet, a single mother, a fiber artist, an observant Reform Jew, a feminist, a brain tumor survivor, a mediocre housekeeper, an excellent cook, a migraineur, probably a zebra, and an introvert. I play guitar and electric bass and mountain dulcimer quite well, autoharp and piano rather badly, sing tenor in my synagogue's choir and contralto the rest of the time, and I would like a llama.

(We wants it. We needs it. Must have the precious.)

I live a few blocks from downtown Concord in a turn-of-the-last-century Victorian with two two cats, two dogs, two pet rats, one kindergartener, various and sundry housemates, three spinning wheels, more glitter nail polish than any one person should really own, and an inordinate number of books and houseplants.

Wyrding Studios has been my full-time job for an amazing eleven years, and I am grateful beyond words for the opportunities it has brought me. I have a job that lets me spend time with my daughter and my family-by-choice, gracefully accommodates being a divorced work-at-home single parent, allows me to work around the challenges of living with chronic pain and C-PTSD, and introduces me to marvelous people around the world.

- Kythryne Aisling
Concord, New Hampshire
November 2016

(For those of you interested in such things: Wyrding Studios began on a proprietary ecommerce system and moved to Storenvy at the end of 2013 and from there to Shopify in early 2015. There is no longer a searchable archive of the approximately 9000 items that were sold on the original site between 2003 and 2013 but you can browse nearly 12,000 photos on Flickr - including hundreds of custom pieces - if you don't mind occasionally having to wade past cat and baby photos.)

 

Portrait photography by Brooklyn Logan/Mindful Mama.