Trying to figure out Tinking Turtle’s birthday is a little harder than knowing a child, pet’s, or even my own birthday. Unlike a child, which has a day where they spring into the universe, (mostly) fully formed, my business’s birthday is not such a defined thing. Is it the day I sold my first pattern? When I got my first business cards? The first class I taught? I’ve been thinking about this , as this last weekend was Fibre Space’s birthday which they celebrated with a big bash. Webs, the largest LYS in the nation, is celebrating it’s 40th year. Woolwinders, another yarn store at which I teach, is celebrating it’s third reopening, as it’s been acquired by Amy, it’s new owner. While all those places had physical openings, Tinking Turtle has never had a storefront.
According to Welcoming Spirit Home, there is a tradition among the Dagara of West Africa that a child’s birth isn’t celebrated when they are born into the world, nor even at conception, but at the moment when the child becomes an idea in the mother’s mind.
So I got thinking about Tinking Turtle’s birthday, and different moments that lead to what it is today.
My first teaching of knitting and crochet (in a formal class), was when I was 16; I taught knitting as part of a crafting afternoon activity to campers. I wince a little at those early students (I could do much better by them now), but learned a lot about how students learn, what keeps people’s (and children’s!) attention, and the basics of how to break down a task into smaller bits. I can still remember those hot summer days sitting on the camp green with our class supplies, talking, stitching, and passing the time as many handicrafters do, with friends.
My first pattern began the summer during my first job after college, when I discovered that my time was my own after work. Vaguely stunned by the lack of schoolwork and with the security of a regular paycheck, I splurged on yarn that I wouldn’t have been able to afford as a student, and began my first sock design. As the summer wore on, the socks steadily grew, and Mr. Turtle (then my boyfriend), began telling me that I could sell my patterns. It would take nearly a year and a half later to sell my first design, and nearly two before I sold that particular sock design. Still, I can remember those summer evenings sitting under the fan on the back porch, listening to crickets and passing cars, those socks growing stitch by stitch.
Summer was when I started the earlier iteration of Tinking Turtle under the name J’s Creations, and began navigating the process of creating a business out of nothing. Summer was also when we incorporated Tinking Turtle as an LLC from its’ previous iteration as
a sole proprietorship – a step that signaled that the business I had started on a shoestring budget was doing quite well.
So perhaps Tinking Turtle’s birth-time can be determined: if not an exact day then a time, when the dreaming of this entity began to grow into the idea it is now.
