Taking Time Off

    I am officially taking 2019 "off." This isn't "I'm taking time off and doing other things," but "I'm taking time off from chasing the Almighty Buck."
    As a very small retail business, about 80% of my sales happen between Veterans Day (November 11) and Christmas. It's a lot of work: I need to make sure I have enough inventory, then it's three days of Open Studios, six subsequent Saturdays at Moschetti Coffee Company's Saturday Artisan's Market, and at least one Sunday art festival. Altogether, it's about 80 hours of packing, loading the car, unloading the car, setting up, tearing down, and (most importantly) selling, crammed into Fridays, Saturdays, and the occasional Sunday, with the remainder of each week spent producing more inventory, and getting ready for the holidays.
    In normal years, I start producing inventory early in the year so I have a good amount on hand by early November. Unfortunately, 2019 has not been "normal": I was away from the studio for much of the first half of 2019, and when I finally got back, the past two years finally caught up with me. I  simply couldn't find it within me to pick up a shuttle, or dye a skein. Meanwhile, the deadlines for different holiday events crept closer and closer. I worried over them, but I wasn't motivated to do anything.
    The turning point finally came in early October, when I formally gave myself permission to take the year off. I let everyone connected with different events know that I wouldn't be participating in 2019, and planned to do other things. We traveled a bit; I designed some new costumes; I put up a lot of preserves; and waited for my "mojo" to come back.
    It is coming back, albeit slowly. I dyed a bunch of skeins at the end of October; I planted flax and will be planting madder this week. I finished troubleshooting a couple problems on the current warp so it's ready to weave off. For the first time since 2015, I went to other people's studios and galleries this weekend for Open Studios. I had a good time, bought some original artwork (a piece of stained glass for the studio from a local artist), and scored a couple more tools from a fellow fiber artist. And I acknowledged that, even when I'm not actively producing cloth, I'm still focused on the artistic process. That warp will get woven off, and the next warp will go onto the loom and get woven off, and so on, but it will be for 2020.

NEWS FLASH!: The flax is up. 😀