Dear All,
This week marks the Autumn Equinox; a point of balance, where day and night meet once again, as the year begins to turn towards winter.
The September equinox feels particularly noticeable here in Cumbria. The light sits low and golden, catching the bracken as it turns copper across the fells. The evenings begin to draw in, the mornings feel cooler, and everything takes on a slightly softer, more wistful quality.
If the Spring Equinox is a door swinging open, this one feels like a door easing gently shut. Not closed, just no longer held wide.
Where spring asks us to rise and unfurl, autumn asks us to gather. To slow down. To take stock of what has grown, what has changed, and what we want to carry with us into the darker months.
There is so much pressure to keep moving. To grow, produce, plan and respond, often before we’ve had time to properly notice what has just happened. But nature doesn’t work that way. The fields give up what they have, the trees let go of their leaves, the light shortens, things are allowed to finished.
Perhaps there is something to learn from that.
I’ve been thinking about this sense of pace within the studio too. So much of what we do at Oubas is already governed by a different rhythm. The yarn arrives, the designs are worked through, the machines are set, and slowly, stitch by stitch, a garment is crafted.
Our pieces take their time. There are hours of work, skill and attention held within something that, when finished, can look deceptively simple. I think that is part of what I love about making clothes in this way. A finished garment carries traces of everything that came before it: the fibre, the yarn, the people, the process, and the time.
Autumn brings us back to that sense of time. It is a season that makes space for noticing; for appreciating what has been made, rather than looking towards what needs to be made next.
That is something I want to take into the month ahead. To resist the feeling that everything needs to happen now. To allow ideas to develop slowly, to make with care, and to accept that quieter periods have their own value.
As the light begins to change here in Cumbria, I’m looking forward to that slower rhythm. To wool, to warmth, to long evenings in the studio, and to the simple pleasure of making things carefully.
The year is turning again, maybe it's time to turn with it.
Warm wishes,
Kate