Hi guys! I hope you're enjoying this beautiful (at least here!) weekend Sunday. For the first time in what feels like a long time, we just relaxed and did house stuff. I tried to stay offline yesterday and take a break from my computer. We moved around furniture and moved all the plants in from the greenhouse for winter. These little changes in our new house are making me so happy - we may be going super slowly but we're moving towards making the house how we want it to be. I love the space so much. I hope you're making good headway on your KAL pieces too! I am caught up on all 3 and trying to stay on schedule with the group. The colorwork sweater is stealing my heart! I can't wait to see how this one comes out in the colors I picked.

 

Today on the creativity side of things, I'm going to talk about one of my favorite ideas - celebrating the things that make you unique (or weird!!!) and leaning into them. I think this is one of the most important things we can do in our lives and I'm curious to know if you'd say the same. I can't believe I've had the opportunity to see two crazy famous people in the past 2 weeks. Just last Thursday night I got to see one of my favorites, Glennon Doyle, and a huge thanks goes out to our KAL participant Kate for hooking me up with tickets (AND SECOND ROW SEATS)! She was mind blowing - I think Kate would agree. She echoed a lot of the sentiments I have about intuition and following our guts, especially in relation to being a parent. It was powerful to hear her talk about it. One of the things that resonated with me the most was the idea of not labeling and how labels affected her life as she grew up. She has a hard time figuring out how to be defined now when asked questions be reporters. Lots of labels and categories we use to describe people just don't seem to fit her, so she doesn't use them. She just says, I am, that's it. I can remember in high school feeling this way - I wasn't a jock but I loved to run and played a bunch of sports, I loved art but was always interested in and great at math too, I was a hippie in a way because of the way I dressed but I never did drugs. So I guess my point is that I SO GET THIS and aren't most of us this way too? I always felt and still do, like some grey in-between person and what I've learned through the years and what Glennon drove home, is that this is just me and that that is all good. All of those in between labels make me uniquely me and there's no need to categorize and label each other, we can just be, as we are. It was powerful to hear and to think about in relationship to by boys and the way I think about new people I meet in the new town we live in. I want to try to label less while at the same time lean into all the weird grey areas that are just me.

 

Many of my podcast guests have echoed this sentiment, specifically Vickie Howell and Andrea Mowry AND of course Stephen West, in just the beautiful way he lives his off the beaten path life.  Like these guests, I believe our quirks and unique curiosities set us apart and are our most valuable assets.

I did this unknowingly in my own life. I was curious about hand spinning chunky art yarns- something very outside the norm in the area I grew up in and something super niche. I followed that spark and it served me well, I think, ha! If I had tried to pursue something else that didn't peak my curiosity or light me up, I don't think I would've had any success. In the past year or two I've started to pursue this idea with more reckless abandon as I also try to listen more closely to my own intuition.  In small ways -  I wear crazy creative outfits that make me happy (even though I really am going nowhere special, ha!) and then in bigger ways, I've created the podcast simply because it's something that inspires me so much. It ties into this idea of letting go of who you think you should be to be who you are - one of my favorite quotes from Brene Brown. Yes, you must do that but you also must fully embrace all of your oddities, weirdness and funky interests. They are your super powers. There is one Ted talk that I adore that affected me hugely in this regard. I watch it all the time when I need a books of confidence. 

Take a look below. She says it so well. You have no competition when you're yourself.  

You can probably see why I'm totally in love with this lady. Wow she says it perfectly. A huge part of why I have my business is to inspire others to do just this, lean into their unique traits and to inspire creativity through making. But not just any creativity, the creativity that comes from within, where you can express your weird, beautiful self and let it blossom in any way. I love that there is a place in the world for this crazy business I have that lets me do this every single day. So thank you all so much for joining me on this knitalong and giving me your vote, that yes, you can do something totally out there and make it work. I want to know what you think about all of this. In what ways do you lean into the things that light you up the most?

XOXO ~ Amy