What it takes

I realized I don't talk very much about how this all started, you know, the obsessive knitting, the crocheting and then the business, market, Etsy shop, blog, all of it. But as I was taking pictures of this new necklace (which I even managed to list in my shop), I thought back to that hot day in June four years ago, when, with a bit of frustration and all the courage I could muster, I marched out to the pole barn and said to Kevin out of the blue, "I'm just gonna do it. I'm just gonna make a bunch of stuff that I like and try to sell it at the farmer's market in the city", as if he was against the idea somehow. And that's really how it began. First with a very small dream, but mostly with a healthy dose of courage I didn't even think I had and the support to slowly put it all in place.

I taught myself to knit while pregnant with our second child, seven years ago, from a book that I bought at Ben Franklin. I bought needles and some awful acrylic yarn and struggled and fumbled with it for months during my son's nap time, all while watching coverage of the towers coming down and the subsequent war.

Crochet came two years later, again, learning from the least expensive book I could find at BF. I started that venture in the car ride on our way to the beach for a vacation. Each time the experience was memorable, probably because of how hard it was not only to learn, but also teach myself from two dimensional pictures. Anyone who has done the same probably shares my sentiment.

It still seems highly improbable, this whole hobby, business venture and obsession with making and selling when I look at it from a distance. When I stop to think about it all I am at my very core so grateful for that little dream, thankful for the healthy dose of courage I didn't know I had, and astonished at how great life can be in the smallest ways, the ones that don't attract fame and glory, but those that give back and enrich and make humble.