In a sort of continuation of my last post: while we small business owners are very lucky to do what we get to do, and I am so immensely grateful for the community of talented and creative people I get to work with regularly, small business can be a slog. December, in the run-up to Christmas, tends to be the best month of the year for many, many retail businesses, and this includes small businesses (perhaps especially so for yarny ones). So perhaps this is a bit crazy of me – but I’m taking December off. Last year, during the month of December, I found myself getting really burned out. I’d had an incredibly busy fall season and was facing deadlines on top of the bustle and stress of the holiday season and the personal toll that can take – and I realized right then that I didn’t want to be in that place this year.

This time tomorrow, I’ll be on my way to the airport, bound for Europe! My husband and I are taking three weeks to travel from England to Istanbul by train. I am so excited. We’ll be covering old ground and new: both places we’ve been before and places we never thought we’d end up. I’ve loaded up my phone with bilingual dictionaries and language learning apps and I can’t wait to take a million photos.

I’ll be periodically checking email and Ravelry, so I’ll still be on hand to answer questions, but my response time will very likely be slower than normal. Additionally, wholesale orders are on hold until I’m back in the office the first week of January.

As a treat, both because I’ll be semi out-of-the-office and also because I love the holiday season, all Paper Tiger patterns will be 25% off for the month of December! Simply use the coupon code papertigerholiday at checkout. There’s no minimum purchase and you can use the code more than once! Please note that the sale applies to Paper Tiger patterns on Ravelry only; patterns published by third parties (Brooklyn Tweed, etc.) are not included. The sale will run from December 1st to December 31st (Pacific Standard Time). Thank you all for making what I do possible.

P.S. For those of you who are as uncomfortable as I am with “Black Friday” as both a name and an idea, you might find this an interesting read. The popularly given origin of the term, the red-to-black story, is a total myth. My aversion to the Black Friday phenomenon (and the fact that it’s spreading beyond U.S. borders) is largely why my own sale isn’t starting until December.