How to make time for making things
Updates from July, including things I've made and a golden-hour photoshoot by the sea
This email is part of my Monthly Updates. It includes a little letter, my latest published stories, a mood board, and share-worthy links like what I’m reading and making. At the end, it also includes the freelance report for paid subscribers. This is where I share openly and candidly about the joys and challenges of being a freelance writer—such as how many stories I pitch, which publications accept my stories, how much money I make, what pitches got picked up, and more behind-the-scenes details. Thanks for reading!
A friend DMed me last week on Instagram: “How do you plan making things into your life - I have so many things I want to make and I just never make the time.” She was responding to a picture of a bracelet I’d just made. That weekend, I went on a making frenzy, whipping up a pillowcase, a summer set, and a lampshade all in one evening. Here’s how I responded to her:
What I should have told her instead was that in order to make time to make, I keep my calendar free of social plans. I clear a morning, evening, or whole day, and I tell Steve, “I’m not coming out of this room until I have something to show you.” Then I pace around my studio and cover my sofa in fabric scraps and get ink on my hands and drop seed beads onto the hardwood floor. I forget to eat and I forget to drink water and I forget to stare off into the distance and stretch my back like my doctors have told me to do. I let my text messages pile up and the time go by, and soon enough it’s bedtime and the room is a mess. I often do this work in silence, realizing that four hours has gone by without music or a podcast.
With more time to think about my friend’s question, my answer has expanded from sentences to paragraphs, chit-chat to deep thought. I don’t know about you, but if I’m not making things, I don’t feel like myself. The song in my heart has nowhere to go and instead stifles into anxiety. Maybe there are only a few important things on my to-do list in the grand scheme of things—reschedule dentist appointment, get oil change—but those tasks feel insurmountable because in my mind, they’re on the same list as my creative ideas. Both lists feel urgent! Everything on them is important!!!!! And in jumbling them, I feel restless and resentful, unfulfilled and angsty. There’s not enough time for it all!!!!!!
On the contrary, when I make time to make, even if it’s just making a mess, when I prioritize the call to create, the burning fire that it is, I’m at ease. I can function again. When my hands get to work sewing or sketching or stringing, something inside of me shifts. Ideas on the page manifest into something tangible, and only then does it feel less exhausting to take my car in for its oil change. For me, making is a priority and necessity. I need it like I need lunch.
To not make is not an option. I simply have to.
Love always,
Latest Stories
For Field Mag, I profiled a new women-owned brand called Before Dawn Supply Co. and tested out their first product, the Horizon Bodysuit. I took it to the Washington Coast last week and Lauren shot some golden hour photos of me wearing it. Here’s the lede: “In January 2025, surfers Sarah Kowallik and Lillian Garlick huddled in the cockpit of a sailboat floating in Raja Ampat, a remote diving destination in the northwest Indonesian archipelago. Rain lashed the deck—the heaviest downpour of the journey so far—and blurred Garlick’s first sketches of a wardrobe essential that the two of them had begun dreaming up together.” You can read the full story here.
My skills stories for Backpacker continue with how to remove a tick the right way, how to freeze-dry backpacking meals at home, and how to identify four edible berries commonly found on trails. What else should I pitch?
Last week, I published a post about tge utilitarian bag company Alpine Sea Co. based in Hood River, Oregon. It includes a peek into their design process.
My new favorite bag is handmade in Oregon
Back in May, I stepped away from my computer and drove east along the Columbia River through the gorge to the quaint, quasi-coastal city of Hood River. There, I had a meeting with the founders of Alp…
Monthly Links
Reading: I’m finally reading All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. It’s been sitting on our bookshelf for years, and when I was in the mood for a long tale, Steve suggested it. I love the short chapters and the flipping between the two main characters. I have 400 pages to go, but I think they’ll go quickly.
Making: As an extension of my making frenzy, here’s what I’ve been sewing recently. Zero Waste Patterns is my favorite sewing book simply because it doesn’t require printing and cutting out a pattern, which, as you know if you sew, is a tedious step. Every garment is based on the width of fabric and your own measurements with the goal of reducing as much scrap waste as possible. So far I’ve made the tee, trousers, boiler suit, and sun dress. My latest sews from the book are a matching set of shorts and a shirt in a floaty washed linen. Next time though, I’m going to make the shorts in a sturdier fabric so they bunch less.
Admiring: I’ve been enamored with every post about Copenhagen Fashion Week, resharing my favorite looks and screenshotting many more for inspiration. I love how people’s creativity manifests in zany outfits that don’t even seem that zany in a place like that. Pretty much anything goes. Brands on my radar there include Munthe, Deadwood, Marimekko (duh), Cecilie Bahnsen (another duh), Alis Culture, Henrik Vibskov, and Rolf Ekroth. One day I will go!
Buying: These brown and maroon Sambas and this sailboat sweater on Depop. Also copped these Donni Rib Kick Flares, originally $184, for $60 on Depop. Finally, an impulsive purchase of the Isa Pant from Roam’s final sample sale.
Subscribing: I just subscribed to
’s Consider Yourself Cultured newsletter about styling, shopping, and expression. His wardrobe color palette is similar to mine (or one I aspire to have) so I’m getting courage from him to style what I already have in new ways.August Mood
Freelance Report
Pitch stats
Pitched: 5 different story ideas to 5 different publications
Accepted: 3 ideas, including the story about Before Dawn. I also pitched a story about hiking in Japan and a profile on Grand Canyon running history that are due in August.
Rejected: 1 story about an emerging material innovation. I don’t know that I’ll pitch it again because the editors who rejected it brought up good points about its validity and adoption.
No response: 1 story about an agricultural project in Oregon that I’ve been pitching lots of places to no avail. I will persist.