The Return of the Newsletter!

this time, with SEWING! hemmin & hawin with no character limit

This is me, ripping off the bandaid!!! I’ve been thinking about this for way too dang long and I’M HITTIN PUBLISH!

The newsletter is called Hemmin & Hawin, the same as my Instagram handle, both named for the fact that I have a hard time with decision making. I like to talk things out. I treat everything like a group project, even when I rope people in that would rather be left out of it. It takes me forever to come to any sort of conclusion. As I get older, I’m learning more of who I am, how to feel more steady, and how to find my intuition in a way that feels less like fumbling around in a purse with too much crap in it.

This newsletter will be like my Instagram content, just….longer, and more personal. And GOOD NEWS, FOLKS! Substack has polls too 😎

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So I used to have a newsletter. It was 2021, before 99% of you knew me, and I had a lot going on (I always have a lot going on) so every month or so I would send out a newsletter to my friends telling them about what I was doing, thinking about, reading, cooking, etc, and a fan favorite section was Things I May or May Not Buy Online. (see an example here. scroll past the weird links at the top) It was literally just a newsletter about myself, and my friends ATE IT UP! Of course they did, they’re my friends. I don’t think anyone unsubscribed (even the ones I subscribed against their will) and it helped me stay connected with my long distance pals and maintain a little scrapbook of sorts, in a way that was more personal and detailed and FUN than it would have been on other social media platforms. But then I got even busier and eventually stopped. And now I’d like to start again!! This time, WITH SEWING!!! We have much to discuss.

I’m not a writer (and I don’t want to be one, it takes forever) but I’m definitely a talker. I have a lot to say and I’m running out of space to say it, and I want a place for all my thoughts to live. I am a website designer for my day job, so I don’t want to think about websites in my free time, so Substack it is!

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My main reason for starting this NOW is because I created a Beginner Sewing Guide and it’s time for it to be released into the wild, and it needs to live somewhere online that folks can reference and that I can update as needed, so it will be published here as a VERY LONG substack post. We’ll see how it goes!

What is the point of this??

• I like to talk, and so far, people like to listen.

• I like to share knowledge and details about my sewing practice, and I want to create things people can reference outside of Instagram

• I want to connect deeper with the sewing community in a myriad of ways, and long form conversational nonsense seems like a good avenue to explore

• I miss my friend newsletter! It was fun and cute!

What will you write about??

• my sewing PRACTICE & projects i’m working on

• the sewing community at large & niche goings on

• grappling with the fact that over SIX THOUSAND people (bots? cryptids?) follow me on instagram

• all my dang hobbies and what i’m up to, like my previous newsletter! (maybe in a separate section from the sewing stuff?)

• WHO KNOWS WHAT ELSE!!! it will be fun to find out!

my cat, Kitty Ledecky, named after the US Olympic Swimmer Katie Ledecky. We call her Decky for short. She’s 9 years old and a RASCAL.

I have been putting this off for so long because I can’t figure out how to keep my personal life content and my sewing life content separate at this level. Will my sewing friends care about my other hobbies and my IRL friends? Are my IRL friends sick of all the niche sewing content?? Isn’t this why I made a sewing instagram in the first place? It reminds me of how my dad has like 6 LLCs. I’d rather just put this all in one bucket, but I don’t think people do that anymore.

We’ll figure it out together, I guess. Because the alternative is never hitting publish, and that’s getting lame.

THAT’S ALL FOR NOW! but my BEGINNER SEWING GUIDE is coming later this week 🤩

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