a year in the making

 

1 november 2012 was an important day for me, I opened my very own store. A REAL one. Ja, Wol! But a little over a year later it mostly still feels like I'm just playing. It's like the cash register istn't real, the skeins of yarn are toys and the students are all my friends. 

 

The latter is not untrue. For Ja, Wol customers and students are (mostly... there's always that freak exception...) excellent people that are a pleasure to hang out with. A bunch of them have become dear friends and a couple of them have found their way into the Ja, Wol core and started helping me out with customers and students. 

 

Lots of women find in Ja, Wol a place to come out and play, to get away from their daily hassles and problems. At Ja, Wol there's chatting, coffee, warm wool and warm people. I hope that when they walk through the door time slows down a little and that the colorful yarns brighten their days. 

I was recently given a book that's about a woman in Seattle opening her wool shop. It reads like my own life. And if you think about it. My life, or parts of it, are like a book, a movie even, I'm Sandra Bullock or Michelle Pfeiffer or Meg Ryan (be it a voluptuous variation) working in my little store and meeting all kinds of interesting people. With one exception in the story line... I have already found my love. 

And, to be honest, without him I probably wouldn't have my little shop/ needle craft school. He supports me where he can. Sometimes I can get a little grumpy when it comes to flexibility with sick kids or other family matters that are making it hard to keep the shop open. He has his own company as well and it's a little (...) bigger than mine. But he buys the groceries on saturdays (and takes the kids with him!) and I'm lucky to be in a situation where the housework is done by both of us.

So... thank you all the students, customers and friends for this first year...

but my warmest and deepest love and thank you's are for you Lennard! I love you! 

 

Madeleine, SazZ, Femke and me. 

pictures by: Jelle Mollema