This Is What I Made

The Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival is only a few days away, and I’ve entered a very particular stage of preparation that I can only describe as quiet panic.

It isn’t really panic in the traditional sense. I’m not running around the studio waving my arms or dramatically throwing wool into bins. I’m making rolags, printing labels, photographing fiber, carding another batt, checking inventory, and looking at what still needs to be finished. All perfectly ordinary things I’ve been doing for months. But somewhere in the back of my mind, the clock that has been quietly ticking is getting louder.

There are only so many hours left before the festival. Only so many batts and rolags we can make, labels I can print, and last-minute things I can finish. Suddenly every idea comes with a second question attached to it: Do I have time?

I think this is a particularly maker-centered kind of panic because making has no natural finish line. There is always one more thing we could make. Another color combination could be tried. Another batt could come off the carder. Another set of rolags could be added to the bins. There is always a project we haven’t started yet, a technique we want to experiment with, or an idea that appeared at exactly the wrong moment and is now sitting cheerfully in the back of our minds asking when we’re going to get around to it.

“At some point, acceptance asks you to stop mentally adding to the pile, too.”

Makers are very good at seeing what doesn’t exist yet. That is part of what makes creating so wonderful. A pile of wool isn’t just a pile of wool. It can become yarn or felt or rolags or a batt. Color can be layered, blended, softened, intensified. One idea leads naturally to another, and before long we’re standing in a room full of finished things while thinking about the thing we haven’t made yet. Most of the time, I love that. A few days before a festival, it becomes a little more complicated.

Months ago, the question was What could I make? There was plenty of room in that question. I could think about new colorways, different fibers, beginner spinning kits, yarn, rolags and art batts. I could experiment. Some ideas worked beautifully. Others changed along the way. There was time to follow an interesting thread simply because I wanted to see where it went.

But a deadline slowly changes the question. What could I make? becomes What can I make? There is a practical difference between the two. The first belongs almost entirely to possibility. The second has to live in the real world, where there are only twenty-four hours in a day and where making is only one part of a life.

That can be a difficult shift when you make things with your hands, because the evidence of what could still be done is everywhere. I can look around and see another pile of fiber waiting to be blended. I can imagine a color that would look wonderful next to something I’ve already made. I can think of another ten rolags, another few batts, another skein of yarn. The possibilities don’t disappear simply because the days on the calendar do.

And so there is this strange period before a deadline when two things have to coexist. There is the quiet prep panic that says, Keep going. There’s more to do. At the same time, there is the growing acceptance that says, Yes. And there is only so much time.

I don’t think acceptance means I stop caring about the outcome. It doesn’t mean shrugging my shoulders and deciding that whatever happens, happens. I still want to walk into the festival feeling prepared. I want our booth to feel full and welcoming. I want to bring a collection of work that feels like The Forager’s Fleece. So I’ll keep making. But there is a difference between continuing to work and believing that everything I can imagine must become real before a particular date.

At some point, acceptance asks you to stop mentally adding to the pile, too.

I think that may be harder than actually stopping. There will always be one more thing I could have made. If the festival were another week away, I could fill that week. Give me another month and I could probably fill that, too. Creative work has an uncanny ability to expand into whatever space we give it because ideas don’t arrive according to our production schedules.

“The possibilities don’t disappear simply because the days on the calendar do.”

Maybe part of working toward a deadline is learning that some ideas are allowed to remain ideas for a while. They aren’t failures because they didn’t make it onto this particular table. They can wait. There will be another studio day, another collection, another festival. Not every good idea has to become something right now.

And perhaps that is where the quiet panic begins to soften, because while a maker’s eye is very good at spotting what is missing, there comes a point when we need to look again at what is already there. There are skeins that have been dyed, fiber that has been washed and dyed, batts and rolags that Jonathon and I have blended together, beginner kits assembled, and experiments that became something better than I expected. All of it is work that exists because, one ordinary studio day at a time, we made it.

In a few days, the possibilities will finally have to give way to what is real. The last labels will be printed. The final things will go into bins. The bins will go into the car, and all those months of work will travel with us to the festival.

I’m sure there will still be something I wish I’d made, another color I wanted to try, another batt I could have carded, another idea that didn’t quite make it from my head into my hands. But maybe the work of these last few days isn’t only about squeezing in as much making as possible. Maybe it is also about learning when to look around at everything that did make it from imagination into our hands and let that be what we bring with us.

By the time the car is packed, the question won’t be What could I make? or even What can I make? It will simply be this:

This is what I made.