Crossroads: From IT to Fiber Artist

For a long time, my world was built around structure. My days were filled with systems, documentation, troubleshooting, procedures, and the quiet comfort of knowing that most problems could be solved if you understood them deeply enough. Working in IT taught me how to think carefully, how to stay calm under pressure, and how to build processes that could hold steady even when everything around them felt chaotic.

It also taught me how easy it is to disappear into work.

In technical spaces, being invisible often means you are doing your job well. If everything is functioning smoothly, no one notices the hours of thought and effort holding it all together behind the scenes. There is safety in that kind of work. Predictability. Structure. Clear measurements for success.

Fiber work entered my life very differently.

It arrived slowly, and without a plan. At first it was just curiosity. Wool passing through my hands. Learning how different fibers behaved. Watching color settle into yarn and roving in ways that felt impossible to fully control, no matter how carefully I prepared. The more I worked with fiber, the more I realized it asked something entirely different from me than my technical work ever had.

Not certainty.
Not optimization.
Just presence.

The truth is, I did not leave one world behind for another. I still carry both with me every day. The technical side of me shows up constantly in this studio. It appears in spreadsheets, inventory tracking, dye notes, process documentation, labeling systems, and carefully organized production runs before a fiber festival. It helps me build consistency from something inherently creative and unpredictable.

But the quieter side of me needed space too.

Somewhere between dye pots, spinning classes, blending boards, and wool drying in morning light, The Forager’s Fleece slowly began to take shape. Not all at once, and certainly not in a straight line. More like a collection of small moments that gradually started to feel connected.

In many ways, this has been both the best and worst time for me to start a business.

That probably sounds backwards. Businesses are supposed to begin with confidence and certainty. People talk about five-year plans, rapid growth, perfect branding, and polished launches. Meanwhile, I was sitting on the floor surrounded by wool, trying to balance exhaustion, creativity, self-doubt, and the strange vulnerability that comes with making things by hand and then showing them to other people.

There are easier ways to build a business than small-batch fiber art.

But this studio was never created because it was easy. It grew from the feeling that I needed to make something tangible again. Something slower. Something textured and imperfect and human. After years spent working in highly technical environments, I found myself craving work that left room for curiosity and wandering attention. Work where exploration was not treated as failure.

Some days I fully intend to spend the afternoon spinning wool, only to become completely distracted by a new dye experiment instead. Other days the wool sits untouched while I reorganize product labels or troubleshoot website formatting for hours. Increasingly, I am learning that creativity rarely moves in straight lines, no matter how badly I sometimes want it to.

And maybe that is part of the point.

Working creatively has also forced me to become more visible in ways I never expected. In IT, I could quietly solve problems behind the scenes. In fiber art, the work is deeply personal. The colors come from my hands. The textures reflect my choices. Even the inconsistencies tell part of the story. Sharing creative work means allowing people to see pieces of you that cannot be hidden behind technical knowledge or professionalism.

That has been uncomfortable at times.

It has also been healing.

The studio continues to grow slowly now, shaped by long dye sessions, spinning practice, overflowing baskets of wool, supportive conversations with my husband, muddy natural dye experiments, and the occasional interruption from a corgi who believes every room should revolve around him. None of it feels particularly polished most days. But it feels real.

I think I am still standing at a crossroads in many ways. Part of me will probably always belong to the technical world that shaped me for so long. But another part has found something meaningful here among the wool, color, and quiet process of making.

For now, I think it is enough to let both parts exist together.