Casting on is the beginning of the knitting journey.
Fraught with frustration.
Nothing in balance.
Awful is the word that comes to mind when I think of the summer I started my business.
I did market research with a one year old under foot. My husband switched workplaces, taking a pay cut to do so.
I cast my stitches on too tight.
My parents came and stayed with us for that couple months. I cried over cash flow projections at Nancy Greene lake. Forest fires made getting content insurance impossible.
I twisted the yarn the wrong way.
My sister helped out. I had paralyzing anxiety attacks trying to finalize my business plan. We looked after a farm of laying hens and mischievous goats.
I cast on too many stitches.
I washed fleece on our front lawn and in the shower of our 750 square foot apartment. I worked twenty hours a week serving in a cafe. We house and cat sat.
I pulled the entire thing out and started again.
I did my first show in September.
Nothing about a first cast on is seamless or well balanced.
Messy, without labels or processes.
But getting the cast on was really just the beginning.
September this year marks two years in business. Two years of a steep learning curve, one that shows no sign on ending. Like the cast on at the beginning of sweater project.
Last week I finished packing up from the Rock Creek Fall fair and I sat in the front seat of the car nursing Ariah while Mike tied the ladders to the roof and Sky slept in her car seat. I stared at the rain starting to fall against the windshield, bone weary and fully content.
I had figured out that cast on.
Amazed at having just finished my third show of my third season as a vendor at not just Rock Creek, but the Rossland Fall Fair and the Hills Garlic Fest, exhausted and elated.
Now I do it again and again, each time a little more seamless, with a little more flow.
My little spark of an idea, my big picture dream was a reality. One that, although not without frustrating moments, has become more then the lifestyle I envisioned of running a small business. It has become the sweater project that never ends, one for every season, one for every occasion.
Something done for sustenance and for the shear love of creating.