I’ve spent the last few days reflecting on 2016, and contemplating goals for 2017. I was feeling a bit frustrated towards the end of 2016 because I felt I wasn’t getting much done on my Creating Craft business. I was seriously wondering why I was so unproductive, so I wrote up a retrospective on 2016, listing out all my accomplishments for the year. Holy Moly, there were a lot of them!

2016 Good Stuff

Business

• Creating Craft
  • Bought Blog Mastermind
  • After multiple false starts, settled on a direction for the business
  • Set up the mechanics of my business: got my business license, DBA, etc.
  • Figured out all the technical parts of setting up an email list, my Creating Craft website, etc.
  • Developed the Creating Craft website (UI design, content) and wrote my first six or seven blog posts
  • Surveyed my customers to see what most interested them
  • Got my first coaching client!
  • Settled on a strategy for my first product
• Book
  • Got Master Your Craft published!
  • Personally sold almost 400 books
  • Got 15 five-star Amazon reviews for the book
  • Gave a talk at SOFA Chicago
  • Did a book signing at Convergence

Weaving

• Teaching:
  • Taught at Complex Weavers Seminars for the first time
  • Gave programs/book signings at the Central Coast Weavers and Black Sheep Handweavers
• Weaving
  • Put a very complicated and difficult warp onto the loom
  • Created a technically complex and emotionally challenging piece (Bipolar Prison) on my jacquard loom
  • Wove a large, complex piece (Ode to Joy) in just 10 days
  • Got my first weaving commission and finished it very successfully!
  • Got inquiries about three other commissions
  • Got my first piece into an art show
• Became the study group leader for the Complex Weavers Jacquard Study Group

Other

• Became President of the Board at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles
• Came up to speed on nonprofit board requirements
• Started contracting with Firehorse Consulting
• Made 136 pounds of chocolates and raised over $5K for the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles
• Researched what would be needed to become a “serious” artist and talked to many more experienced artists.

But you’ll notice that there’s stuff going on on four or five fronts. No wonder the business was languishing!

Themes for 2016

Here are the themes I found while reflecting on 2016:

• A lot of questions about personal direction. Do I want to be an artist? Do I want to make a career change/look for another job? Do I want to start a business?
• A lot of learning about unfamiliar roles:
  • Starting an online business
  • Being a serious artist – what it takes and connections, etc. to get me there
  • Becoming President of a nonprofit Board
• Lots of commitments in different directions, making it difficult to make progress in any single area:
  • Creating Craft business
  • Book launch and publicity
  • San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles Board duties
  • Weaving commissions and other creative work

Overall, I’d say 2016 was a year of exploration, looking at many creative directions and experimenting with many different roles. A year of opening to new possibilities.

Goals for 2017

2017 needs to be different. While I’ve got enough money to go another year or so without income, I need to start working seriously on whatever professional route I choose. That means putting on hold, or putting entirely aside, many other possibilities. While the word for 2016 was EXPLORE, the word for 2017 needs to be FOCUS – distilling down and really working on one thing. That will be Creating Craft, for now.

I haven’t yet set detailed goals for Creating Craft. Ideally, I’d like to be making a full-time income by the end of the year. I recognize that is unlikely, so I have set myself a smaller, yet still ambitious target: $3,000/month by the end of 2017. To do that, I will have to write a lot more content and also do a lot more publicity. My goal is to get an e-book out in January, and to have an online class up and going by June. There will be a lot more concrete goals along the way, but those are the big ones.

(The e-book, for those interested, will actually be a series of four workbooks about how to find more time for creative work/use your studio time most effectively, finish complex projects, deliver projects with a deadline, and avoid getting over-committed.)

Those are big steps, with big learning curves at each step, and I expect this project/business will account for most of my personal growth in 2017.

The other big focus will be learning my duties as President of the Board at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles. That is a huge responsibility, and there is much I need to learn and do.

That doesn’t mean I won’t be doing other creative work. In fact, I plan to do quite a bit of it! But I plan to keep my weaving relatively simple – stuff I can churn out without agonizing over each creative decision, or spending 20 hours translating from a drawing into weave structures. So the art career will be on hold, in favor of a simpler line of scarves and shawls. My long-term goal is to find a way to create a line of scarves/shawls that are interesting to make, yet can be created quickly and profitably sold. That means making relatively simple projects, unlike my usual big, complex behemoths.

I’m also planning to do some relatively non-creative “infrastructure” projects – things that aren’t terribly interesting in themselves, but which set me up for later success. In particular, I’m planning to dye about 3200 samples using Procion MX fiber-reactive dyes – one set of 1600 samples on 20/2 mercerized cotton yarn, and another set of 1600 samples on silk broadcloth (fabric). The sample dyeing process is a pretty mechanical one – once the dyeing method has been developed and refined, it’s just a matter of repeating it over and over again until all the samples are done. (If anyone is interested in reading my sample-dyeing approach, I’ve posted the Google doc with my dyeing protocol here.)

So those are my 2017 goals. I hope it will be a productive year, and that I can accomplish everything. But the main theme for the year is FOCUS, so Creating Craft – and the intellectual and emotional energy required to drive it – will take priority over everything else.

And, for those of you patient enough to read through this entire screed, I offer this 2016 feline retrospective to brighten your day. I wish you all a happy and prosperous New Year!

While gazing in awe at the work I saw at SOFA Chicago, I came across several themes that I think are interesting, and which I’d like to explore in future work. Probably the biggest one is optical illusions related to color, like this spectacular piece, Zhuang Hong Yi’s Blue to Orange, rice paper on canvas. Here’s a video of the color changes as you walk from one side of this piece to the other:

(Email subscribers: you’ll have to go to my website to see the video; for some reason, links to videos don’t work properly in the email subscriptions.)

For those not in a position to play video, here are some photos showing the piece from various angles:

I’m fascinated by the interactivity of the piece – as you move right or left, the color changes, and the view from left and right look totally different.

I also like the complexity of the piece – it has visual texture and physical texture, and has a dimensional complexity that makes it more interesting (to me) than a flat wall hanging. I’m already thinking of ways I might be able to use this effect in my own work.

It also reminds me of this book, which is on my Christmas list:

I have no concrete plans for how to put together 3D origami, dynamic color changes, and handwoven cloth yet, but ideas are percolating…one possibility is a spiral rosette that is blue on one side and orange on the other. I’m not sure how that would be constructed yet, but somewhere in the coffee pot of my subconscious an idea is brewing…

There were some other pieces exploring related concepts. Here is Seed Universe 36 by Ilhwa Kim:

This piece is made out of flattened rolls of colored rice paper, rolls of various size and lengths that are then glued perpendicular to the canvas. The result is a piece with delightful complexity, which gives something to the viewer both close up and at a distance, and at many angles. Here’s a picture of the entire piece:

And here are two pictures of another piece, by the same artist:

I found it utterly fascinating, and I’m already thinking of ways to explore similar concepts.

There weren’t many textile pieces, so when I saw this quilt, I ran excitedly over:

I was surprised to discover that it was actually carved and painted wood! Beautiful.

Even after seeing the “quilt,” I was almost deceived by this “bathrobe” (also made of wood!):

Browngrotta Arts was one of the few galleries offering textiles. Here’s one of my favorites:

And here’s a closeup:

I loved this piece for its harmony and motion, and because it offers something to the observer both from a distance and close up.

There were a ton of other spectacular pieces at SOFA Chicago – these are just the ones that caught my eye. If you love fine craft, you should go to this show. (At least go once, so you can get an idea of the marvelous things that are possible in craft.)

Louise asked how Mike and the cats are doing. They are just fine, and holding down the fort at home while I travel about the country. In fact, Tigress helped me pack:

Eventually, however, they both got bored and went back to their favorite Olympic sport: synchronized sleeping, snuggled up to each other in the cat tree. (Do not try this at home, kids! These are trained professionals.)

And Mike? He’s doing fine, although he reports that Tigress is now insisting on playing “fetch” with him, usually multiple times in a day! This is new – previously, she would play “fetch” with me all the time, but wouldn’t play with Mike. Of course, now that he’s turned into a cat-treat dispenser as well (she gets a cat treat whenever she brings a thrown object back), she’ll likely harass him a lot more. Which is, of course, just awful. 😉