What I've been up to for the past five years

 After Skein Queen, I took a couple of months off. I was deep into perimenopause and getting all the highly unusual but completely disruptive symptoms. That in itself is a long story that I won't get into here.

By the autumn of 2019, I was feeling ready for a new challenge. I got a part-time job as a marketing assistant at a local country pub. The landlord had set up a marketing company to help other country pubs promote their food and drink.

That was kind of fun and by the February, I'd taken on a second job as a transcriber for a company in Newbury. It was lovely to be working with a team again and to have a lanyard! The work we were doing was highly confidential in a secure environment. We were transcribing documents for prestigious universities, broadcasters, hospitals, financial institutions, ambulance services, government bodies, police and law courts.

But come March 2020, like so many people, things became rocky when Covid hit and lockdowns happened. The pub was forced to close. With furlough, I held onto that job until the August. And continued with the transcription job after it moved to being remote. I was used to working remotely as I'd done so at my previous company since 1999, so it worked out perfectly.

In October 2020, we decided to move from Thatcham in Berkshire to Donaghadee in County Down, Northern Ireland. Our daughter had recently moved to Queen's University in Belfast. Although we were familiar with the area, we'd never been round the Ards peninsular. We were completely taken with it, put our house in England on the market, and I came over to search for a new house. My husband, Calvin, is from here and his family live in Holywood, so it worked out well all round.

My dream was to live by the sea, and Calvin's dream was to have a big garden. After looking at a couple of potential properties, I found a beautiful property in the countryside, one mile from the shore and a mile and a half from the pretty seaside town of Donaghadee. With over an acre of garden.

We moved in in May 2021. I was still working as a transcriber but I'd always wanted to study art. I completed an online foundation in Art and Design from the brilliant West Dean College alongside still working. It was intense but I did enjoy it although I don't think I've picked up a paint brush since!

Just as I was finishing up the foundation, I applied for a job as an English Editor for a company that provided dubbing scripts and subtitles for all the main studios in Hollywood. If you can think of any streaming service you use, we did work for them which meant getting to see upcoming movies and tv series months before they were broadcast. I absolutely loved working with the team in Cape Town, London, Cairo and California, and I'm still in touch with lots of my colleagues. The work was intense, with the full-time working week squeezed into Sunday to Wednesday. There are so many different formats of subtitles, you'd be surprised at how complex it is and when you throw translators into the mix and strict client requirements, the complexity increases tenfold. After two years, it was time to wave goodbye to the team and bow out.

Which leads me back to the world of dyeing. I know I'm privileged to have the perfect studio here (pics next time) in the annexe. A ready-made kitchen and a large, light studio upstairs. As you may have noticed, it's a slower pace of life. The process of natural dyeing is a slow process. What do you think of what you've seen so far? I've had requests for more yarn types and weights, single mini skeins, more embroidery threads, classes and patterns. The fabric will be coming soon. Any feedback on how you'd like to see it develop? Leave me a comment and help shape the future of Herbarium Dyeworks.

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1 comment

Good luck on the new venture

Calvin

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