Dear Crafters!
Without further ado, I'm blogging to let you know that The Craft Sessions' events will be on hiatus for 2019. This means no annual Craft Sessions retreat, and no Soul Craft in 2019.
For some of you this will come as a big surprise, but others of you will have felt it coming.
The Craft Sessions started as a total passion project – I simply wanted to bring people together who crafted for joy, and foster a love of hand making! And it worked. So many wonderful women have got to know one another through the incredible events we have run over the last six years. And I have been so grateful to be able to be there, and bear witness to the magic that happens when you bring people together around their shared passion.
You see the thing is that The Craft Sessions and Soul Craft have never been about building a business for me. I believe that connection is the secret sauce of life, and that hand making elevates our lives by giving us buoyancy. Sharing those beliefs at the events I've run has been so joyful and inspiring - but events also take a load of work and intention. I would never want to put on an event where I was just going through the motions. I think you can feel when an event has been put together with intention and care and love.
Some of you know I’ve been working on writing a book on how making impacts our wellbeing and elevates our lives – it’s my next passion project! (Or you could say it’s simply a continuation of this one.) Through running the events and talking with so many of you, both in person and online, I’ve realized the things I’ve been writing about, the ideas we have been in conversation about, don’t yet have broad understanding and acceptance in the wider world.
And so I’m on a mission – to promote hand making as a process that can elevate our lives by improving our wellbeing. And that means I have to finish the book I have been trying to write for the last few years. I believe that a hand making practice could be incredibly supporting and elevating to so many people, if only they knew why and how they could use it. These ideas deserve a much broader audience. These ideas could be of service to so many people.
The ideas contained in the book are too important to do a shitty job. A half-assed book isn’t going to cut it. And once written, I need to launch it, promote it and talk about it. I need to spread these ideas as widely and as loudly as I can.
The problem has been that when I run events I have a really easy opt-out for how I can spend my energy. For example, I worked on Soul Craft for nearly six months full time alongside the lovely Claire. Everything else in my life took a back seat, including blogging…. and I got to avoid the harder heart-work of writing the book by “having” to work on the festival. Realising that the festival was an incredibly joyful avoidance tactic on my part was a little painful, especially because it was so magical to be there, witness it, be part of it. Soul Craft was a total joy and all I'd hoped it would be.
This is why I need to take a year – I need to take a year to focus on getting my next passion project off the ground. This work deserves my full attention.
I promise there will be more events - more Soul Craft and Craft Sessions goodness! Just not any major ones in 2019.
I'm sincerely sorry to those of you who were excited about coming next year. I hate disappointing you!
The best way to keep up to date with all I’m doing is to join the mailing list. I am going to shift to a semi-monthly newsletter during this outwardly quieter period. And I’ll be back blogging every Friday - like in the old days :). There are already quite a few new posts up there from the last month or three, like Stash Less - For The Love Of Opportunity Cost , Making Shit Up, and Intentional Craft As True Comfort.
Please comment and let me know what you think. I’d love to hear your thoughts about this, and I want to wholeheartedly thank you for your ongoing and passionate support.
Love
Felicia x
