Last week Saturday I had the honor of teaching a class at Artistic Artifacts in Alexandria, VA. It was the first time I taught a class in a quiltshop that was not mine. Special feeling! I couldn't have been at a better quiltshop because Artistic Artifacts is not only a top quilt shop, we also have been complementing each other for many years. It takes a certain mindset to see where you are competing and where you are working together for a greater good: providing the quilting community with the best. Some shop owners would see the presence of another quiltshop in the area as a threat. Without having this ever discussed with Judy, I know we both felt confident enough as shopowners, each in our own way, to not see the other as a competitor. We each did our own thing. Artistic Artifacts was and is much artsier than I was. We do like the same fabrics, but Judy is putting the focus on mixed media and global fabrics and I, as a person who loves detail in color, loved ( and still love) big ranges of basic and blenders. Our customers have loved these options and have visited us both frequently. My classroom was filled with many old customers and even some dear friends.
In my shop days, I didn't do "facebook live". Social media is neither my strength nor my passion, but for Judy it is a super simple given. She is a natural in this and while the "Facebook live" was starting at 9.30 am, it wasn't until 9.28 am that she invited me to go upstairs for our talk. She hardly has to prep a live event, it comes to her effortless! It was just a talk that happened to be taped. Maybe that is the magic, because you can see and hear on the now YouTube video how we are cut from the same wood. It was fun and informative at the same time.
Afterwards she told me "it went well", but as a first timer I had no idea what to expect. When I saw it later, I heard my own accent. After 30 years in the US, I am still in many ways so Dutch as well: English is obviously my second language. Also my mannerism is so Dutch, I didn't realize this until I saw myself on the screen. I mentioned this to my husband who responded "Carly, that is who you are". I was 34 years old when we moved to the US for what we thought would be a 3 year assignment. 32 years later it shows that I was already too old to lose my roots. Still Dutch! I have come to really be happy in both continents. Even in a small country like The Netherlands you have regional language differences called dialects. As a southern girl the people in the North and West always pointed out my accent, all this in a country that is a 4 hour drive max from border to border!
I guess I have always had accents, part of moving around! If you stay in the same place all your life, you won't have an accent. My children don't have a Dutch accent when they speak English (they were young enough and many people would be surprised if they tell them they didn't learn English until elementary school), but when they speak Dutch they have an American accent.
I have spent now almost half my life in America, half in Europe. Both places have enriched me in many, many ways and both are home. What a privilege! I know when I am in Europe my old friends see and hear a lot of American influences in my behavior. I probably couldn't do a "facebook live" in Holland without mixing a lot of English words in it? Next year, I may teach some classes in The Netherlands and we will see. My quilting mind is so embedded in English and in the US, giving a class in Dutch may be hard! I will be translating myself all the time. Can't speak any language correctly any longer...
