6 Years of Making Stories - A Personal Recap

Dear lovely Collective Members,

I hope you had a lovely summer! It was wonderful to see quite a few of you during our August Knit Night - it's always such a treat to sit and knit and chat with you for a little while.

Today, I am back with a slightly different post than the last ones I wrote. Today, 6 years ago, we officially signed the founding papers for Making Stories GmbH, so I thought it would be nice to take stock with a little list today.

I like lists, but I don't like "What I've learned" lists, because frankly, I feel like I'm continuously learning something new and changing things up - both because I want to and because external circumstances force us to. So, take this as an in-flux list, as something that is ever-changing:

I am capable of changing.

The first one that comes to my mind is incredibly personal. For a long time, I felt like I was ... finished. Like, not done, but I was who I was, and that I couldn't change that. If running this business has taught me one thing, then it is this: I can change. A business is an entity that's moving all the time, it's evolving, it's changing - or it dies. As a business owner, you need to respond to how your environment changes, no matter whether that's rising print cost (nooo) or more people getting into natural yarns (yaaay).

So, if the business can change and evolve, I can too. From the big - I can change how I respond to change - to the small: I can change how I start my day, and how my email signature looks like. It's been incredibly freeing to realize that.

I love this business. I am SO glad that this is my work.

What an enormous privilege this is: I wake up every day and get to do something that I truly, deeply love. It's not always been like that here at Making Stories - there were times when I dreaded work, mostly because the setup or team wasn't right, but for the past two years, it's felt like heaven.

I get to spend my day doing all sorts of awesome things - pick colors and yarns for the shop, package up beautiful orders, chat with designers and folx who produce wonderful yarn, you name it.

When something is not working, better change it quickly.

I've gotten better at recognizing when something is not working, and making changes to make it work again for us here at Making Stories. At the beginning of this business journey, I would sometimes drag my feet in situations where I had a bad gut feeling - and that's always turned out worse than when I took quick action.

Luckily, we haven't had any big "not working" moments in the last year, but I'm sure they'll come again, and I am happy to know that I can trust myself to recognize them and act.

We have the best customers.

Truly. I am so, so incredibly lucky with all of you. You saved us last year when I didn't know how Making Stories would survive, and how I would ever start paying myself. You come back and order again, and again, or you discover us, gradually get to know us, and then become a regular. You walk up to me at a yarn show, and I finally get to hug you - all of those moments add up to this: You are the best.

I can't wait for what's to come.

I have a million ideas for the next years, and I finally feel like I have the stable foundation and tools to put them into place, gradually, slowly. I am truly so excited for what's to come - both the things that are already in the works as well as the ones that just exist as an idea on paper right now. (If you have an idea about Making Stories you'd like to share, please do!)

Thank you so much for supporting us, for sticking with us through the hard times, for making this work possible for me and my team. I so appreciate this, and you.