Yes and yes

...a quick update from me:)

Kaliko Journal is a free newsletter about natural dyeing, textiles, art practice, and life by Ania Grzeszek. Feel free to share parts of this letter wherever and with whomever you’d like. If you want to support my work, subscribe to this publication and/or purchase my handmade products. Thank you.

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Last time I promised I would write to you about finding my voice... and guess what. I won't. Or rather what I mean is I will—but not this time because another thing came up.

Something rather spontaneous happened last week—if you could call getting married after a 3.5-year-long engagement a spontaneous thing. So yeah, we got married!
Almost exactly 9 years after we first met, we both said “yes” in a small registry office in Aarhus, Denmark. We knew we were actually getting married only for the last 2 weeks, so a lot of work stuff had to suddenly take the backseat. We had a lovely time in Denmark, though, and we loved officially becoming a family.

If you’re asking yourself if two weeks is enough to prepare for a wedding, the answer is: yes! We had our outfits ready. Flippi wore his lovely suit (it was the 4th wedding this year we attended so he got a proper suit this spring) and I got my dress from a second-hand basket a few months ago, only because it looked cute and cost 7€. I also borrowed a white pullover from my bestie, because Denmark in November is cold! We never wanted rings, so that was one less thing to worry about. And I got my bouquet on the go, from a random florist, 30 minutes before our wedding. The shop didn’t have any white flowers in stock that day, but my impromptu wedding bouquet turned out even better for that. It was spontaneously messy, imperfect but in the end, weirdly, exactly right—just like this day. We spent the last 20 minutes before our appointment eating freshly baked buns and drinking tea in a small local cafe, in our fancy outfits that no one actually seemed to notice, accompanied by our two witnesses (aka best man and maid of honor). And then we went to the city hall and said Yes and Yes.

But if you’re asking yourself if two weeks is enough to mentally prepare for a wedding, the answer is definitely a “no”! That was something I didn’t account for, an absolute whirlwind of emotions, that, to be fair, had absolutely nothing to do with my husband-to-be. I don’t know if things would be different if we gave each other more time to get used to the idea of getting married, or if the feelings would come up anyway. At this point, I have to praise my psychoanalytical therapy group, for being the safety net to catch me when I’m feeling like spinning out of control as things get too intense too fast. And I have to praise the German healthcare system for allowing me to be in therapy at all.

So that’s that. In the end, we are absolutely chuffed that we finally got married! We are fully committed to each other and our life together and now we have a piece of paper to prove that to the tax office ;)

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After this short break, I am back to working full-time at Kaliko, and as the year is slowly going to an end, I am planning for the next year.

I have a shop-wide sale going on until Thursday, with almost everything marked at -20%. I also introduced free shipping for orders over 100€/150USD. Have a look here.

And in the meantime, I am getting back to working on an ebook about plant dyeing I started in 2019—and to restructuring my shop. I would love your input on both of those things!

1. What is your preferred form of learning? Ebooks, video courses, online courses with photographs and text, zoom classes? I would be extremely grateful for your answer.

2. What kind of products would you like to find on my website? More unique bags? Handmade original art? Supplies for dyers (dyes, mordants, fabrics, books)? Do-It-Yourself kits (shibori, indigo, etc)? Small products from other makers? Books and publications about textiles? More courses? Please be as specific/vague as you wish. All input helps!!

You can answer by hitting “reply” to this email or leaving a comment under the original post on Substack. Thank you and talk soon!