New and Unfolding

Happy New Year, my friends. What a surreal start to the year this had been. A shroud of thin smoke has been covering our house as we paint the inside and look forward to moving in. I’ve been quietly and painfully aware as I roll these pretty colours across my new walls that so many, too many, people have lost their homes in our county’s devastating fires this summer. We have been fortunate to be tucked away in a part of Victoria that has been safe from them. I hope it stays that way.

I’ve been mulling over a New Year blog post for a few weeks now, because I’ve had this expectation that a New Year energy and enthusiasm would visit me soon, but with our old routines crumbled (it turns out I’m a bit of a routine junkie. I was never like this before kids!), family visiting, and a big effort put into our new house, I think I could sleep for a week! I am grateful though. Grateful and longing for gentler, more certain, times.

Don’t you just love our deep teal kitchen wall? That gap above the bench tops (covered for protection from the tiler) will be for our aqua tile splashback. It makes me breathe joy every time I see it. I’ve never been one for decorating, but I love the chance to do this to our own home. Our amazing builders managed to get the house ready for us to paint the day before Christmas, and we’ve been in here almost every day since Boxing Day, painting and putting the kitchen and laundry in ourselves. I’m so grateful they were willing to work with us this way. We saved a lot of money doing these bits ourselves and we were able to get it done when everyone would be on holidays anyway!

Tim’s parents were here, and my parents are still here. My dad was a builder back in the day before his health declined when I was a kid, and I have felt so safe and glad with this portion of the project in his skilled, managerial hands, and for his constant hard work, even when I know he was tired and in pain. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to express how much it’s meant to me. Our folks have helped with work and meals and child wrangling and I just feel so lucky to be supported in this way. We (a software engineer and a quilter) haven’t worked this hard on our feet in a long time!

On Monday the tiles go in. The plumber and electrician have a few more bits to finish, and then soon (maybe a month to go?) it will be ours. And my excitement is only tempered by the huge packing and cleaning job I have ahead of me!

Mum and my mother-in-law Anne have been helping me stitch hexie flowers the last few weeks. It’s been lovely sewing them with their company and enjoyment. I’m using Sharon Holland’s Spirited Fabrics for Art Gallery Fabrics. I was planning to have more done by now, and to have a pattern ready by the end of the month, but this summer work and summer heat has taken everything from us. I miss throwing myself into a project like this, but slowly and surely, the work ahead to get us into the house is dawning on me, and I think I need to push all my dreams and schemes back again until we’ve settled.

At least it’s almost the right time to think about pretty wallpaper! I got this and a few other samples from Spoonflower. This is my favourite. Isn’t it delicious?

2020 is still such a mystery to me, and I can’t figure out if it’s because I just haven’t had a moment alone to sit down and get my head around it, or if it’s because it just needs me to wait for it to unfold. Perhaps it’s a bit of both. We haven’t got a firm moving date yet, and I’m still not sure how to orchestrate the move from our current house and separate business location in a way that minimises extra weeks of rent, other costs, and stress. Tim’s put in a request for a regular, shorter work week this year at his job, and we’re waiting for a reply. Lucy, my amazing colleague and friend, finishes in 6 weeks to move back to Swan Hill, and my mind is a complete blank when it comes to trying to visualise what things will look for Tales of Cloth after she leaves. I’ve tried several times to sit with paper and pen, to write a plan, a shape, something I can wrap my head and hands around, but every time, I draw a blank. I think I’m being asked to wait.

Tim and I have spent a lot of time mulling over the business the last few months before the summer break. We started 4 years ago! From the get go, we always assumed we would grow it to employs others. Partly because we worked in youth work, and it was a good fit for unskilled labour, and partly because I didn’t want to start a creative business only to spend all my days packing orders and answering emails. But between learning what the business wants to be, combined with how we work best, we’ve decided to shape it to better suit this Ma and Pa team. I just don’t quite know what that shape is! Tim and I are both messy, creative types. He’s probably naturally more driven than me, whereas I’m mostly just in it for the quilts. A lot of the things I thrived on when I started quilting - quiet sewing alone, or with the kids nearby, blogging about my experiences and wonderings, working on what I felt like, when I felt like it - have been sacrificed significantly for launch schedules, travel, writing and promoting a book, and the constant background noise of financial uncertainty.

Our new workspace in progress, a blank slate!

Just before New Year, I started reading Jewish writings online about sabbath and Jubilee. Evenings and weekends in our house are for working on the business with Tim because he works full time, and getting the washing, tidying, food, etc ready for another week of work and school. I feel really ready for a change of pace, or focus. Some letting go. Some varied experience, learning, exploring, sitting still. In ancient Jewish law, a sabbath day was taken each week, a sabbath year (mostly agricultural, I think, though I’m still learning more) was taken every 7 years, and a Jubilee was set after the 49th year (seven sets of seven years) in the 50th year. In that year, slaves and prisoners were set free, debts were cleared, work was kept to a minimum, and God would give a special blessing to Israel, by providing for them during their year of sacrifice. Now I really love making little connections, and it bothers me at least a little that I haven’t been running the business for 7 years, and I’m not about to hit my 50th year, because that would be fun! But my reading has me reflecting on what it means to rest, really rest. What it means to live like I am cared for, and not like I’m alone, and if I stop running for a minute, the whole thing falls apart. What it means to stop being imprisoned by our original goals and give ourselves permission to let the business and Tim’s work, and our new life here, serve me and my family well.

What this all means in practice is, as I’ve said, very blurry. Cutting down from Lucy and I working almost full time, to me trying to work part time and keep evenings and weekends free, while still getting orders out quickly, will require some creative solutions, and I’m looking forward to them bubbling up to the surface. I know I want to learn how to grow more of my own food, and how to make our house feel warm and homely and inviting. I want to read a few books, and learn to build a deck with Tim, so that we can spend at least some of our weekend sitting on it, drinking tea. I want to do puzzles. My kids are just getting old enough to enjoy puzzles and I love it! The last few years have had a very singular focus, but this year I want to spread myself out again. Change the focus of effort from ‘growing’ to ‘being’.

I’ve never had a home that’s ours before. And the last 8 years or so have been filled with longing to start a business, planning a business, and starting one. What a new and mysterious place this is! To have our own home and our own work that we can shape to suit us. Most of my daily experience at the moment is filled with stress and uncertainty. I am so daunted! But I’m glad for a moment to sit and remember that I have a pretty wonderful 2020 waiting. So long as I can muster the courage to carve out what I want. And once I finish packing!