GROW with Eleanor Whitney

This past Saturday was our first public event- the GROW workshop with Eleanor Whitney, Maine born author of  GROW: How to Take Your Do It Yourself Project and Passion to the Next Level and Quit Your Job. We were so excited to see so many smiling faces at SPACE Gallery for this hands on workshop. Molly gave a lovely introduction and then Eleanor was off like a shot.  She is such a positive and enthusiastic soul, it was hard not to get energized by her advice. 

That's Eleanor, second from the right. And Molly, far right! Jerusha Robinson, one of our knitting teachers, is second from the left.

She led us through some simple, but important exercises for zeroing in on what our ideas were by asking very straightforward questions.  Everyone wrote down their ideas on paper and then we broke into smaller groups to talk about what we had written with each other.

While we were all writing you could have heard a pin drop. It was great to see how intently everyone was thinking about their ideas. I found it particularly exciting to think that some of these ideas will actually come to fruition and maybe A Gathering of Stitches will even be able to support them in development.   At the end of the workshop we all shared ideas and resources and everyone went home with their heads full of business plans.

We are very proud of the Portland small business community and all the cool enterprises that have come from it.  Portland certainly represented on Saturday. Thank you for coming out!  We are looking forward to more events like this, and to playing a part in fostering new businesses in the fiber and textile community.  Eleanor has agreed to come back in another six months to do a follow up workshop.  We're thinking this could become a regular event!