It's almost November, a month that I associate with cool, fragrant air and the coming of white icing on trees and flowerheads........I don't think I'd survive in a semi-tropical climate. I look forward to the coming of the Big Chill. It makes me walk briskly, maybe to experience the crunch of leaves and last summer's flower stalks underfoot. There is a smell that only occurs in autumn woods -- a mixture of damp moss and moulding leaves. I learned to love it in Minnesota, where woods abound, and now I find myself wanting to drive to some woods and just go for a long, long walk. Maybe get lost. So I'd better make it a Metro Park so 'getting lost' wouldn't be life-threatening. Maybe I'll call up Karen Turlay so that we can tromp around the Cranbrook grounds.
Anyway: I'm thinking, ruminating really, about what the next month holds. We have moved into new studio digs, which almost everyone loves better than the old digs -- if only because we can watch the winter skies roiling and churning through the huge picture window. The new sofa is perfectly positioned so that everyone can OOOH and AHHH, as yesterday, over the swift-moving clouds and seagulls. Everyone wanted to grab grays, lavenders, whites, hot pinks to knit a sunset.
There are start-up costs, and we are still struggling with them. We have had to cancel a big event because of the local economy, which still can't support luxury purchases (such as workshops). So I will postpone expensive visitors for awhile -- and that's fine. We need to feel our way along. In the meantime, I have some wondrous trunk shows lined up, mostly with Michigan people (this makes me VERy happy, all this Michigan stuff!), and the line-up starts this weekend with the brilliant Rita Pettreys of Yarn Hollow (near Grand Rapids). She'll be there when the Second Annual Shop Crawl commences two days from now.
And that's another wonder. When we started the crawl last year, there were five shops. Michigan is infamous for a general failure to band together (as shops do in Minneapolis or Seattle), whether rightly or not. So we have been determined to do something about that. Five shops were a good start, and the shop crawl was a success. This year, we have SEVEN! The stops form a long arc from Plymouth, Michigan, to St. Clair Shores -- a really cool development. It can be done in one day, but we have made it a two-day crawl, complete with passports, bags of treats, refreshments, and nice discounts. There is a 200 dollar door prize at crawl's end. Proceeds from passport sales go to ovarian cancer research. This is thrilling. It will help us financially, of course -- all of us. But, more important, it gets people out of the house, into the loop, into one another's shops to talk and make friends and SOCIALIZE. This past week, the owners of the Knotted Needle came to visit us. If we can keep all of this buzz going, everyone will benefit. The boats all rise. It's really true. You CAN combat a recession (and a culture of isolation) by taking serious swipes at it -- we have proof.
In the meantime, I will go for a walk and inhale the amazing evidence of seasonal change, growth, advancement toward whatever lies ahead for all of us.
svb
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