Making
Why I started The Anchorage, and what I hope it becomes
By Sydney Jane · The Journal · Entry 01
I learned to needlepoint on Nantucket when I was eight years old. My grandmother handed me an Erica Wilson Nantucket whale canvas (if you know needlepoint, you know) and we sat on her porch overlooking the ocean. That was it. I've never really stopped.
Growing up, we moved a lot. Different houses, different neighborhoods, always somewhere around Boston. But Nantucket was always the constant. The one place that didn't change. The anchor.
The craft is the what. The community is the why.
I got my first sewing machine at nine. By high school and college, I had drawers full of fabric and half-finished projects, and peers who genuinely couldn't understand why I was needlepointing. It wasn't yet a craft anyone our age was doing. That's only changed in the last two to four years, and I love watching it happen.
Boca Grande came later. Visits to my grandmother there, another coastline that shaped how I see color and pace. Between Nantucket and Boca Grande, I learned that the best things are usually slower than you'd like them to be, and that's exactly what makes them worth keeping.
The first pieces weren't for sale. They were for people I loved: a canvas for a friend's new apartment, a monogram for a wedding gift. Then friends of friends started asking. Word spread the way it does when something is made with genuine care, and somewhere around the thirty-seventh order I realized this wasn't a hobby anymore. It was the beginning of something.
So: The Anchorage. An anchorage is the place where a boat drops anchor: where you settle, where you rest, where you stay a while. That's what I want this to be. Not just a shop. A place.
I don't want to compete with the other talented canvas designers and painters doing this work right now. I'd rather collaborate, and help grow this craft for the generation after mine, the way it was given to me. That's the real reason this is a community first, for people who still believe in making things by hand, giving gifts that mean something, and showing up for each other while they do it.
The longer vision is bigger than needlepoint: workshops, gatherings, eventually a real space you can walk into. We're not there yet. But every stitch is a step.
If any of this resonates (the slowness, the gathering, the making of things that last) I hope you'll stay a while. Join The Slow Post, come to a workshop when the dates are announced, or just say hello.
— Sydney
