2024 -> 2025

The Verb team shares what we learned and appreciated in 2024.

Oakland Shop Holiday Hours Reading 2024 -> 2025 7 minutes Next Bread & Butter - new colors are here!

By AVFKW StaffJan 8, 2025

From the Verbivore newsletter, 12/28/24.

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I really love to practice of reflecting back, and making intentions moving forward. To create a meaningful pause, instead of skipping ahead to the next thing.

So as as my last email of 2024, I have asked Verb's team members to join me in answering the following questions:

1. What was one of my favorite things in 2024?
2. What did I learn?
3. What are the possibilities for the future?
4. How can what I learned help make those possibilities a reality?

Or more broadly: I have this one life to live, how do I want to spend it?
Or even more simply: what small thing is giving me joy, and can I follow that spark daily?

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My (Kristine) response:

1. Bu Dalmini's Visit to Verb.

2. Bu Dalmini traveled all the way to Verb from Java, Indonesia. She leads a collective of 90 women who are keeping alive the rare tradition of naturally-dyed batik. While visiting us, Bu Dalmini demonstrated how to draw with wax. The shop and studio were bubbling with excitement. I learned how happy it made me to have Bu Dalmini with us and how much I love sharing my love of natural dyeing with my fellow natural dyeing peers as well as with an excited and engaged community. (Thank you to everyone who came!)

3. Possibilities for 2025 include spending more time discussing color and natural dyeing - with a focus on our book Journeys in Natural Dyeing. Released in the pandemic, we have never really had the chance to spend time with it like we have with The Modern Natural Dyer.

4. Bu Dalmini's event was quite casual. I can get bogged down with trying to plan the best event ever. Keep things simple and straightforward so the events and meet-ups can happen.

My daily spark of joy: color via natural dyes and plants.

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I have been trying to get back into a habit of sketching, and expanding what that means for me. Whether its drawing, stitching, or even planning dream projects for the future it helps me take the pressure off myself that every project needs to be the best thing I've ever made.

Another thing that helps me with this is noticing things and patterns - the tiny rocks on a beach, the petals in a flower, the little bugs in the garden. Learning to look more closely at the world around me reminds me that all the small parts of nature are what makes up the beauty around us, and how all the small creative acts I can do daily make up the whole of my creative practice.

--katie

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The part of your prompt that elicited the most from me is:
what small thing is giving me joy, and can I follow that spark daily?

One of the best things I did for myself this year was to allow myself space to slow down. I tried to get the necessities done, but I also did things that brought me calmness and joy. I’m a big to-do list person, and this year I tried letting things be undone for the sake of peace and joy.

Part of this was following the small sparks that gave me joy, even if it wasn’t in the plan or how I usually do things. This meant being curious about what I was feeling and experiencing and letting myself go somewhere I didn’t expect. I realized that I have many things that bring me joy (cooking, baking, gardening, knitting, spinning, hand sewing, being outside, playing with my cats) and the one I planned for today might not happen to allow another one in.

With my knitting, this mean spending more time appreciating the beautiful fabric I was creating even if I felt pressure to finish a project. Similarly, spending more time playing with color: what goes together and how does it make me feel? How is color made through combining dyes or paint? I spent more time in the garden when I had planned to do something else, or I spent more time knitting when I planned to be gardening.

Some of my favorite things from 2024:
+ spinning Bread & Butter fiber and combining it in a knitting project with Everyday
+ having a more elaborate, long term artistic project involving dyeing and embroidery
+ combining fluffy yarns (Frond, Soft Current, Wild Bloom) to create the most gorgeous fabric
+ spending more time walking and taking deep breaths
+ wearing my knitwear daily and not treating it as something precious to be saved

- Sarah

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This year has been a practice in embracing discomfort as an opportunity to grow. I tend to greatly fear the unknown (only human), and the future is full of it. 2024 has been about practicing sitting with fear and doing the thing anyway. Growing self-trust - that I can be the one to make sure I get what I need. I am grateful to myself for deepening my friendships, feeding myself well, strengthening my body, and making clothes that make me feel good. May I take this foundation of self-love with me into 2025 and grow my capacity to do new hard things.

- Shawn

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One of my favorite things in 2024 was the opportunity to take time away from work to attend the
California Field School at Hidden Villa in Los Altos, California, a 12 week course at Foothill College. This allowed me to receive an Archaeology Field School Certificate.

It’s difficult to describe what I learned but it all revolved around cultural resource management in California through the lens of archaeology. It also taught me that I have been practicing applied archaeology throughout my time working at A Verb for Keeping Warm and writing Journeys in Natural Dyeing.

For a legacy project at Hidden Villa I created a botanical survey by mapping with a Geographic Information System (GIS) (which is a computer system that analyzes and displays geographically referenced information) all of the plants around a house built in 1860 to see if I could relate the plants to the different people who had lived in the house. Researching further their regional background and potential use through attributes such as culinary, medicinal, and ornamental etc.

In the future, I would like to use this skill and knowledge to apply to dye plants near AVFKW and beyond to help identify plants that can be used for dye reliably and have been used in the past. I am very grateful to Kristine and the staff at AVFKW for supporting my endeavors of taking a course like this which has been a lifelong dream of mine.

- Adrienne

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Feel free to send us your thoughts and responses to the above questions!
It would be fun to include them in future emails for inspiration.
(Let us know if you would like your first name used or if you would like to remain anonymous.)

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All of us at Verb wish you a very Happy New Year.
And look forward to learning and making with you in 2025.

~ Kristine