your people are out there

HEY. I’m lousy at public appearances but I wanted to say hey. That’s me at the Weaver House holiday market in Philadelphia last Saturday, during a rare moment when I was not trying to eat with one hand and demonstrate a loom with the other, or talk to people, or walk around and ogle the talent and mojo and sheer getting-it-done on display.

Most of the time it is waaayyyy easier for me to post on a feed than talk to real people In Real Life, but IRL talking has so much more information in it than the one-way mirror of The Feed, and more energy too. All day long I said, Can I give you my 10-second speech? to people walking by, waving the loom around like that guy in the plaid suit who used to demonstrate vegetable peelers in Union Square, and not one person said no and most said yes way more enthusiastically than I probably would have, if I were them. 

I met a weaver with a stack of old weaving and dyeing books she rescues and sells cheap to keep all that knowledge in circulation; and a man who crochets 75 coasters every year to give away at a party he hosts and who wanted to try weaving them instead; and a woman who told me that I should read to my kids even though my kids are about to be disaffected teens, because children can comprehend way more when they are read to, than if they are reading on their own; and a woman who had come for a casting call in the same building who stumbled on the market by accident and showed us pictures of these incredible tufted-rug art pieces she had been making; and four teachers who told me how important it was for kids to make imperfect, tactile, satisfying crafts. 

So yea I forgot the part to the banner stand that held the whole thing together and we had to just pin it to the tablecloth. And the zipper on my jeans broke so I had to cover my fly with an apron all day. But I also got a pretty serious dose of something I tend to forget when I’m at home working by myself, which is that making things, and those things themselves, are a way of engaging with the world, and with the dimensional, complicated, interesting people in it.

So I guess my PSA would be, don’t forget to follow your work into the world now and then. Even if, or maybe especially if, like me, that isn’t your first impulse. Join a local guild; take a class, or teach a class; enter a show. Find a place where your people are and talk to them. 

Your people are out there. And they want to talk to you, too.