No Small Thing
Fitting holiday season into a tiny house
Dear Reader,
December is here and with its arrival comes unspoken permission to officially begin wintering. It’s the everyday invitations to savor the season’s simple pleasures that are offering me a blanket of peace.
A warm cup to-go on a rainy workday morning.
A midday tea.
Chunky knit socks in the evenings.
Candlelight after sundown.
Early bedtime.
Shared meals.
The first panettone over coffee.
South traveling winter morning sun meeting the window prism, together casting a splatter of little rainbows across the wall.
Globed string lights across the top kitchen shelf illuminating the framed paintings and pasta tools of grandmothers past, a round tin I have big intentions of filling with homemade cookies, in their honor, to travel with later this month and share with the loved ones who remember.
This week at our casetta, in this season, was a reminder of how mighty we can be in this minimal space. We cooked our first big meal in our little oven (grateful for a plan and a set of timers!) and in celebration of the completion of another stage of construction, hosted an inaugural porch dinner party. Scattered throughout came new orders from the Hina Luna Winter Shop. After eight years operating from a small, but in comparison, much bigger home space and a temporary brick and mortar, my shop now humbly lives in organized tote boxes tucked into a long drawer and in sealed containers on a shelf devoted to shop treats in the fridge of our tiny house. Where there’s a will and an inextinguishable creative fire, there’s a way.
And do you want to hear something special? I’ve recognized every name on every order so far this season as a friend, as family, as a return customer. It reminds me that this small shop — throughout all of its changes and iterations over the years — is largely carried by the support of a small, intimate community of people who not only value quality made, beautiful things but, moreover, the invitation to savor more slow, intentional, connected life moments.
Journeying through small business ownership these past eight years (with many entrepreneurial ventures during the decade before that) has certainly had its lows and I’ve many times considered laying Hina Luna to rest entirely. Instead though, I’ve redefined it from merely a business but as the name given to my greater creative outlet. Thus, I’ve allowed it to be reinvented, to create new ways to relate and offerings to share. And, to much of my gratitude, many of you are still here through it all — from the early indigo dyeing days to this year’s commitment to my writing practice.
This weekend, as I wrap up orders in white paper and striped cotton string, à la general stores of days gone by, and hand write note cards of appreciation on deckle edged paper, I want to thank you for the ways you engage with Hina Luna whether through your paid subscription to this publication and opening these letters each week, your purchases from the shop, your thoughtful words of encouragement left on these letters and on Instagram. All of it supports this dream of mine to make this work full time again especially when being a small business, let alone a working creative, is as volatile as ever. In return, I wish for my offerings and these love letters to life — to you — to continue to support your commitment to choosing well, giving well, and living well.
Happy December from my tiny home/tiny shop to you —
