Can you believe it’s May already?! I sure can’t! Every year just seems to fly by faster than the last. It’s hard to believe it’s already time for the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival, but it is!
We’ll be there in our regular space in the Main Building, Booth A30 (about 3/4 of the way down the left wall from the front door). This is our 14th year at the Festival, which also confounds me!
We’re bringing loads of yarn: Nona, Aurora, Sunna, Andromeda, Birte, Selene, Verdande, Luna – everything from heavy lace weight to worsted. This year, I’ve dyed a bunch of new repeating colorways and, new this year, a whole bunch of my one-of-a-kind, totally non-repeatable Lucky Pots. I’ve been posting a lot of sneak peek photos on my Instagram feed, so do go check it out if you’d like to see more.
I have so much fun with these Lucky Pot colors, and oftentimes I really wish I’d written down the recipe and the instructions. They’re so good, and I love them so much, I wish I could make certain colors again. But that would defeat the intention of them, which is fresh, spontaneous creation. A potter friend, Del, once told me: “You only create something once. After that, it’s production.” For artists, no matter what the medium, creation and production can at times really be at odds with each other. It’s sometimes easy to get into a “rut” of reproducing the same thing over and over again, no matter how beautiful or popular these items might be. My friend Del, an incredibly talented potter, built himself a salt-fired kiln to force himself out of production, which was, of course, a huge, necessary, and integral part of his business. It made him switch gears and get into that truly creative space, with no concern about being able to do the same thing again, because he could not predict or fully control the results of these salt firings.
I’ve always remembered his words, how excited he was about his salt-fired pieces, and how truly amazing this work was. And I realized that I was in the same place in my own creativity: creating repeating colorways is necessary and integral to my business; they’re fun and I love them. But, I create these colors once, and then it’s reproduction. I needed to do something that was completely spontaneous and unreproducible. This truly creative process is freeing, and it’s also amazing how it spills over into everything else I do.
That’s a long explanation for what and how my Lucky Pots came to be. I hope if you’re coming to MDSW, you’ll swing by my booth and check them out! I have lots of them dyed on very base!
Also for MDSW, I have special 2018 MDSW-themed stitch markers sets from Katrinkles (while supplies last), and a new order of my popular camp mugs which include my personal mantra – Life is short, knit the good stuff.
Hope to see you at the Festival! But if you can’t make it, I’m planning a shop update for when I get home which will include lots of Lucky Pots and more!