Transcript for
Episode 65: Creative Seasons
You’re listening to The Sheepspot Podcast, a show for handspinners about making yarn we love.
Hello there, my darling Sheepspotters! Welcome to episode 65 of The Sheepspot Podcast.
I’m Sasha, from sheepspot.com, where we are laser-focused on helping you make yarns you love, with beautiful fibers and top-notch instruction.
I have a question for you. Are you embracing the seasons of your creative life? That’s what I want to talk about today. It’s something I struggle with, and something I’ve been thinking a lot about as winter descends (a month early!) on southwestern Ontario.
Before I get to that, though, first, I want to dedicate this episode to the memory of my friend and academic colleague Jonathan Burston, who died unexpectedly on October 15.
I also want to acknowledge that it’s been a while since the last podcast, and fill you in on what’s been happening with me and with Sheepspot, and, finally, I want to tell you about a fun little something I have planned for the first week of December.
So: catching up. The last time we spoke, I was right in the middle of the launch of The Sheepspotters’ Society. Well, the launch went beautifully, and I welcomed around 80 wonderful spinners into the membership, which was--and continues to be--so delightful and exciting. I heart them so much.
Because the membership site was custom-built from scratch, there was definitely a bit of a learning curve as we got going and I got comfortable with it and I and my web designer figured out how the members were using the site and how to make it as easy as possible for them. We made some adjustments to the site and I’m now really happy with how its working. But the first two weeks definitely felt like a bit of a scramble.
But then we were into the first month’s content, which was on wheel mechanics, and we all just settled in and just got to work. It’s been so wonderful to see the members becoming more comfortable with their wheels and really understanding how they work and how to adjust them to support creating different kinds of yarns.
And I’m happy to say that I didn’t fully appreciate, as I was planning this venture, how much I was going to love doing it. I love serving this group of spinners. I absolutely love it. They are so engaged, so eager to learn, and so kind and patient with each other and with me. It’s just been a complete delight. I’m having so much fun.
I’ve also been working on the world’s biggest shop update, which went live last weekend. I’ve been so busy getting the membership going that I haven’t had time to do any product photography, so we had a lot of fiber dyed that I’d never put into the online store, so last week I did three or four marathon sessions taking photos, editing photos, and getting everything posted, which was a huge load off my mind. And now I think we’re in a place where we can plan on a regular monthly shop update. So that’s been huge as well.
So that’s what I’ve been up to--that, and cooking up the fun little something I alluded to at the top of the show. It’s called the #1Fiber5Ways Spin-Along, and it’s going to happen for five days the first week of December, December 2-6. If you choose to join me, and I hope you will, you’ll be spinning one fiber five different ways. Every day during the spin-along, I’ll post a short video demonstrating the day’s drafting technique, and you’ll spin a small sample skein using that technique. I’ve designed it to be a non-overwhelming way to experiment with sampling, drafting, and really getting a hands-on sense of the difference that different techniques make to your results. And you won’t need a lot of fiber; 100 grams of some combed wool top should be ample. If you’re interested, you can sign up at www.sheepspot.com/spinalong. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun.
That was a long preamble, so let’s get to today’s topic, creative seasons. Two things got me started thinking about this.
The first is that got really cold here about 10 days ago, started snowing, and it pretty much hasn’t let up since. And this really isn’t the kind of weather we generally have in November. We might get a bit of snow, but it usually melts right away. Real winter doesn’t usually set in until December. And it’s been fascinating watching my thoughts around the weather.
I basically hate winter, and I’ve just been feeling that it’s so unfair that we’re having winter in November. Talk about a pointless thing to be outraged about. But part of me has been pouting every time I have to put on a coat or clear the snow off my car. I am not handling it well. I am resisting big time. And when you argue with reality, you only lose 100% of the time.
But the other thing I’ve been noticing is that a tiny part of me is a bit gleeful, because winter means snowy weekend afternoons doing things with wool. And, while I can’t say I look forward to those afternoons when it’s not winter, I actually do love them. There is nothing cozier than spinning on a snowy winter afternoon.
So as we’ve been having all this unseasonably cold and snowy weather and my brain’s been throwing up all this chatter about it, I was sitting in my bathtub, listening to a recent episode of Kim Klassen’s Write Life podcast (as one does). Kim is a photographer and a photography teacher. She also teaches people how to use journaling to create big changes in their lives, and that’s been the central focus of her podcast. (I adore her and heartily recommend everything she does. Seriously, follow her on Instagram.)
Anyhoo, Kim was talking about the fact that she hadn’t been podcasting for a bit because she had gotten really excited about her photography over the summer and she was feeling some tension between what she was currently focused on creatively and what she had set out to do in the podcast. And a friend of hers pointed out that she had been in a season of photography during the summer, not coincidentally because there’s a lot more light during the summer, and that in the winter she might move into a season of writing.
And of course my ears pricked up because at that very moment I wasn’t podcasting, and feeling bad about that (as we podcasters usually do). And in that moment I realized two things: one, that I had been in a different season (in this case, a season of getting the membership going and focusing on the members) and, two, that, just as I was resisting the turn of the physical seasons and the reality of the weather around me, I tend to be a bit resistant to the movement of my own creative seasons. I tend to think that I “should” be doing things other than, or in addition to, whatever I’m really engaged with creatively in the moment.
I suspect that I’m not the only creative person in the world who wastes energy by not just blissfully sinking into what’s engaging in the moment. And in the wake of these two bathtub realizations, I have resolved to stop doing that and fully embrace what I’m finding most creatively engaging in the moment. To give myself that permission and to trust that it’s OK, that some part of me knows what she’s doing.
So I have two questions for you:
Is your making seasonal? Do you spin less, for example, in the summer? Is there something you regularly do instead?
If you’re multicraftual, and I suspect many of you are, do you go through “seasons” in which you’re focused on one craft or another? If so, I’m really interested in whether you resist or embrace that movement.
I’ll be posting these questions in the Sheepspot Community Group on Facebook and I’d love it if you’d join me for further discussion there. If you’re not a member yet, just ask to join and I or my crack assistant Ava will make it so.
Well, that’s it for me this week. Thanks you so much for listening, my friend. Don’t forget to head to www.sheepspot.com/spinalong to join us for the #1Fiber5Ways Spin-along.
I’ll see you next week, when I’ll be talking about twist! In the meantime, go spin something!