Weekly-ish notes on navigating big change

In which I confess…

Lean in a little closer.
I have a secret to share.

Don't tell anyone, but I have a super-hero alter-ego. You know her as the Blonde Chicken.

And no, she doesn't fight for chicken rights (although we are both vegetarians).
And she doesn't dress like a chicken (because that would be ridiculous).
She's the Blonde Chicken for a totally adorable reason (if you don't know the story, go read it here), that hasa nothing to do with chickens (and only circumstantially with being blonde).

Even if you don't know it, you've already met her.
Well, you've met her if you thought you were talking to me, at a craft show or at TNNA, or on Twitter or on Etsy or anywhere that has anything to do with yarn.
(If you ran into me at the grocery store, then yeah, it was just me)

What?

For the past, oh, 4 years she's been running the show.

The Blonde Chicken started by approaching a local yarn shop (in Dayton, OH) and offering to dye some custom  colors (I was busy managing a paint-your-own-pottery studio at the time). Then she photographed more yarn and put it on Etsy.

When I moved to Tennessee and got a desk job, she was NOT detered.
She took the yarn to an art gallery and did a spining demonstration during an Art Walk (the nerve!).
She's the one that applies to craft shows (and then has the guts to actually GO and talk to STRANGERS) and twitters and heck, lots of the time she writes what you find on this here website.

Why?

The Blonde Chicken is strong and brave and silly and passionate about eye-popping brights and socially-responsible fiber.

And when I first ventured online, as a dreamy girl with a teeny tiny business idea, I was too shy. Too shy to post on a forum. To shy to blog. To shy to tweet.

I know you wouldn't believe it if you've met me at a craft show, but I am painfully shy.
Turn bright red and stutter-kind-of-shy. Painful!
I put off applying to craft shows because I could not imagine the horror of talking to people. real! live! people!

So I called upon Blonde Chicken. She jumped in with both feet; making friends, snapping pictures, writing, dyeing, spinning.

Everything that seems too too. Too overwhelming. Too scary. Too out-there.

All those things, the Blonde Chicken does.
With silly music blaring and dye pots bubbling and chat a-chattering, we do it together.

That's just weird.

Yeah, I know.

But the thing is…it's helpful.

Helpful to not feel like I have to put myself out there.
Helpful to ease my way into it.
Helpful to remember that somewhere in me is the ability to do epic stuff.

I've been thinking a lot about the role of the Blonde Chicken in my business because now that I have a real, in-person yarn shop and teach real, in-person classes, a lot more people are meeting me. Tara.

And I realized that, in the beginning, I needed Blonde Chicken. Needed her to go out and biggify the us and the yarn.

But now, thanks to growing with Blonde Chicken, I'm not so shy. I'm not so afraid to say “Hi, I'm Tara, I make yarn.

I'm tempted to end this with a sappy “If you're nervous about biggifying…find your inner super-hero”, but, well, that's too sappy.
Instead, I just want to say, in the words of a multi-national corporation I don't even buy from: Just Do It.

Find the thing (Victoria-shmoria can help with that) and do the thing.
Put yourself out there, share your thing, be brave.
And if you just ca not imagine doing any of that, make up an alter-ego.

It'll be fun.
And weird.
I promise.

PS. Ha! I'm not the only one! The super-smart Maryann has an (imaginary) assistant, Tina! Love the hair, Tina!

The Cycle of Creativity

I have a theory:
Creativity is cyclical.

In my own work/life/business, I have these crazy full-of-ideas periods, followed by amazing get-stuff-done periods, followed by…today.
Stuckness, tiredness, I-don't-wanna-ness.

The cycle affects individual ideas (let's make a Learn to Knit kit!) and my  general, day-to-day creativity.

It starts with an idea, then a flow of ideas, then I get in the flow of making the ideas happen. This revving-up is my favorite part of the cycle. I would live here if I could.
I would camp here and do nothing but generate ideas and journal and plan all day long.
But then I get anxious to DO, to implement.

At the apex of the cycle is not just the flow of ideas, but the production, the work, the actual doing. In other words, creating.

But after that apex, as the projects continue to roll forward and the rush of ideas turns into a rush of details, sometime in the midst of doing, I slow.

And soon, the slowing is the overwhelming characteristic. No longer creating the thing, I'm either brunching (introducing the thing to the world) or I'm slowing down in the middle of the thing.

Following the slowing, comes the fallow period.

Despite being raised in the agricutural heartland, playing in cornfields, my days measured by the height of the corn: I haven't recognize or respect the fallow period until recently.

What does fallow even mean?

  • cultivated land that is not seeded for one or more growing seasons
  • undeveloped but potentially useful

I tried to ignore it.

Who wants to be “not seeded”?
Who wants “undeveloped”?

I tried to go right from the slowing, back to the doing.

But something in me resisted.
The ideas dried.
The inner pushpushpush halted.

I thought about napping.
I read for hours.
I baked, cleaned, strolled.

Before I recognized that this is a stage in the cycle, I kept pushing.
Pushing to get ideas.
Pushing to work on projects.
Pushing to work work work.
Pushing to get out of the un-doing and back to the doing.

But pushing got me nowhere.

Inexplicably, inexorably, unequivically the ideas came back.
First, just a trickle, then a stream and then a rush and I am back.
Back to doing, to planning, to creating.

Whether I push or not, my creativity cycled.
And, as Teresa said on Twitter today:

When you stop pushing it creates a vacuum that will fill back up with better ideas than you'd been pushing for!

When I recognize the fallow period, when I respect it, when I rest in it, I create a blank space, a well that is soon filled with ideas and energy.

Today, this week, I'm in a bit of a fallow period.
But it's ok, it's just part of the cycle.

Crafty Must-Reads

For the last day of National Craft Month, I wanted to share my crafty resources.

These are the websites and podcasts that I go to when I'm in need of some inspiration. I read a lot of non-crafty blogs too, but this list is just the crafty!

Craft Sanity – interviews with crafty superstars

Crafty Pod – website + podcast about all things crafty

Kim Werker – writer, crocheter, thinker-of-deep-craft-world-thoughts

Cast-On – the first (of the still alive) and the best knitting podcast

ColorBOMB – Velma is my color hero

Pioneer Woman – Cooking + photography that pushes me to be better

The Yarn Harlot – Is there any knitter who doesn't already read the funniest of all possible blogs?

Posie Gets Cozy – Alicia creates a prettily be-flowered world I want live in

Make + Meaning – the most thoughtful musings on our creative community

Did I miss your favorite resource? Share it in the comments!

Contest: Have you seen Inside Crochet?

Ok, so in the next issue, the April issue, of Inside Crochet, is an article written by me.

This is my first published article and I'm ridiculously excited to see it!
But, even though the issue was published in the UK this week, it hasn't made it's way to the US yet.

I'm so anxious to see it that I've decided to hold a contest!

How to Enter:

  1. Find a copy of Inside Crochet (all over the UK and in Barnes + Nobles and some yarn shops in the USA)
  2. Snap a picture of my byline
  3. Post it online (flickr, your blog, wherever)
  4. Leave the link in the comments of this post, along with info on where you found it (town, shop, etc)

The winner will be chosen randomly on 5/10 and will win a FREE skein of hemp laceweight (or, if you don't want hemp laceweight, you can take $12 off your next BCB order!).

Winner – Handmade Marketplace

Yay!

Time to give away a copy of Handmade Marketplace!

The winner is:

MissAriane!

She (like many of you!) asked about pricing.

Handmade marketplace has good information about pricing, and I have all sorts of things to say about. In fact, I talked about pricing briefly in the free crafty-biz  Q+A.   Maybe I'll do a full class in the future?

Thanks to everyone who entered the contest!

#craftsocial on Twitter

One of my favorite things about Twitter (and there are so many things I love about it) is the proximity it's brought to my favorite crafty superstars.

One of them, @sisterdiane, organizes a monthly chat for crafters. To join in, use the hashtag #craftsocial and follow along here. Every month it is full of fun conversation, wacky craft projects and links to everything crafty.

If you're not sure how to use hashtags (or what I'm even talking about), but you'd like to use Twitter to grow your crafty business, check out my class (starts tomorrow!) on De-Icking Twitter.

I’m celebrating National Craft Month by posting something crafty that catches my eye every weekday. Share your favorite crafty finds in the comments!

New Goats!

Ok, it has nothing to do with National Craft Month, but I just had to share.

Yesterday, the very first day of spring, my mom's dairy goat, Emily, gave birth to two sweet little babies:

Baby Goat!

We all went in to check on Emily in the midst of celebrating my little brother's 11th birthday. We had no idea that she had just given birth, until we saw sweet little brown kid standing there shivering:

Next to him was laying his little white brother, still, uh, shall we say, freshly born?
In the pen

Within 30 minutes they were both trying out their new legs, mumbling to their mama and searching for their first meal.

Milking!

Handmade Marketplace – book giveaway!

I have one copy of Handmade Marketplace to give away,
read to the bottom to learn how to win.

(photo from karichapin.com)

Oh, I can not tell you HOW excited I am about this book!

I was honored to be interviewed for it, to serve as part of the “Creative Collective” – the group of makers who contributed bits of our own experiences.

That was crazy exciting, but then I got the book in my hands.

And oh, I'm far beyond excited to be included in it, I'm thrilled that this book exists.
I'm thrilled I have something to recommend, as a complete resource, when someone asks “How do I start a crafty biz?”

It has everything a crafter needs to know/think about/plan for in selling their crafts. Craft shows, marketing, making their thing, wholesale, everything!

I have read a loooot of business books.
Most of them are geared to big businesses.
A few are aimed at truly tiny businesses (my favorite: The Boss of You)
Even fewer are about craft businesses (and the best, by Barbara Brabec are over 20 years old)

But this is the first book  for us.
Crafters who blog. And podcast. And sell online.

Obviously my review is wildly biased because the book is filled with people I adore (Kari! Kim! Diane!)…but my mom (who is totally out of the online-craft-world loop) called me last night to say “I can NOT put this book down! It's teaching me SO much!”

Thanks to the kind people at Storey, I have one book to give away to a commenter!

To enter: leave a comment with your business question and I'll choose one commenter randomly and announce the winner next Friday!

PS. I met the author (and everyone else mentioned in this post) on Twitter. Being a part of this book is just one of the fabulous side-effects of loving Twitter.

I’m not an expert

Really.

I don't think I am know I'm not.
In fact, even thinking that anyone expects me to be one freaks me out.

And yet.
People ask me questions.
I answer them.

But in my answering, I'm just saying this is what works for me.
Not I know the only right way.

I've been thinking about this expert-thing since reading this post about not being an expert. And while working on my Twitter class.

I am not an expert

I wasn't sure how to announce the class, because I keep getting hung up on I'm not an expert!

Morover, I think Twitter Experts are the problem!

They overwhelm us with information on what we should be doing.
Or they have all these rules that makes Twitter not-fun and frankly, sort-of-icky.

So why teach a class on Twitter?

Becaue,  in every one of my other classes for crafty businesses, someone (or several someones!) ask about Twitter.

How can I use it without being icky?
What's the right way?
Won't I seem spammy if I talk about my business?
What if no one is following me?
Am I doing it wrong?

And Oh! do I have answers. Lots of don't-be-icky, but-still-grow-your-business and have-lots-of-fun answers.

Not because I'm an expert.

But because I love Twitter.
I love making new friends.
I love getting to know people better.
I love sharing my business in a non-icky way.
I love the opportunities it provides (magazine articles, interviews in books!)

So, despite not being an expert, I'm going to answer your questions about taking the ick out of Twitter while rocking it and having a great time and not-being-at-all-sales-y in a week-long class, next week. You can read more about it here.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

HPIM0431

I've never really celebrated St. Patrick's Day, other than to forget to wear green and get pinched (ow!), but I love watching others celebrate it.

And since green's one of my most favorite colors, it isn't hard to find anytime-inspiration in the plethora of green-goodness across the web.

Here's the good green stuff I came across today:

Do you have a favorite craft or food you make at this time of the year?

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