AMA with AMA: Questionucopia!
Kula stuff.. cookies... and my cabin in the woods!
Psst. As always, my posts are far too long for e-mail, so click ‘read more’ at the bottom to see the whole thing!
Dear Kula Diaries,
It’s that time of week for an AMA… if you’re new here, ‘AMA’ is an acronym that most commonly is attributed to the words, ‘Ask Me Anything’. AMA just also happens to be my initials. Hence, AMA with AMA.
This week, I’m back to the Kula Diaries Google Vault, which is where you get to submit questions. Please keep in mind, that I have a lot of pending questions… I’m getting to them in a ‘first come first served’ order, so if yours hasn’t been answered yet, it doesn’t mean that I’ve forgotten about you, or that I won’t answer your question.
For those of you who don’t have a question, but still want to submit a comment — please feel free to use that form to do so. It’s entirely anonymous, so if you want a direct response, be sure to include your e-mail address. I genuinely *love* reading all of the comments, and it is the highlight of my day when I get to check the ‘inbox’ of the Vault.
For this week, I’ve chosen a few questions that will probably lead to a smorgasbord of discussion… and I’ll probably throw in a bunch of random stuff too. Sometimes I get started in one direction … and end up in an entirely new direction… and I like it that way.
So, let’s get started!
1. Are Kula Cloths made in the U.S.?
They sure are! Kulas are manufactured in two different places: Pennsylvania and Colorado. I have two different factories that I have worked with since the beginning of Kula to manufacture them. Our ‘stock’ prints are made in Pennsylvania, and our artist/custom series Kulas are made in Colorado. The biggest difference between the stock prints and the custom Kulas is how they are made. The stock prints are made by printing repeating patterns onto large rolls of fabric that are then cut into squares and then sewed and finished into Kulas. The artist series/custom Kulas are cut into squares first (of white fabric) and then individually sublimated with artwork — which is why they have non-repeating prints on them. I’ll show you the difference…
This is one of our current stock prints:
And this is one of our artist series prints:
When I first started Kula, it was really important to me to work with a factory in the USA. I was lucky enough to find two different factories that I’ve now worked with for over 5 years. We have a wonderful relationship, and they treat Kula like it is their own. In fact, Kula was able to keep most of these factories open during COVID, when many other businesses had to shut down (having a reusable toilet paper company during a toilet paper shortage was something I never could have predicted!). Partly due to Kula, our factory in Pennsylvania has been able to expand from a 22,000 sq ft facility … into a 50,000 sq ft facility. They currently have two sewing machine operators who spend every day making Kula Cloths so that they can keep up with the demand. In addition, all of our Pyka Pants (underwear), Kula Pockets, Mini Pockets, and our new Rapunzel Gaiter are all made in the USA! The cost of manufacturing in the USA is significantly more than if we were to manufacture products in a different country, but I’ve loved being able to work with small factories and to support their dreams too.
One of the most fun things about working with our factories is that we leave each other notes all the time… when I send them supplies, I often include stickers and little ‘love notes’, just letting them know how much I appreciate them. And they do the same… they send us little notes in our Kula boxes that say things like We are grateful for you. We are proud to be a part of Kula. It’s a really special relationship, and I couldn’t imagine working with anybody else!
2. What do you do if you crave a chocolate chip cookie outside of your designated weekly time?
I absolutely, most definitely will bake myself a cookie if I crave one! I have talked about my intuitive eating journey before… and honoring my hunger and cravings is one thing that I’ve really worked on being more attuned to. For years, as I struggled with disordered eating, the food police would arrive and tell me that it was ‘bad’ to eat certain things… or that I’d need to deprive myself if I was going to eat a cookie… or eat out. At my worst, I’d practically starve all day just so that I could go out to eat in the evening. It was miserable. I was obsessed with food, and entering my ‘macros’ into MyFitnessPal took a huge portion of my day, since I was attempting to plan everything down to the last gram. How bad was it? Well, I was weighing my lettuce, if that gives you any idea of where things were.
Once I decided that I needed to change my relationship with food, I started eating all of the things that I had previously labeled as belonging in the NO GO ZONE: cookies, croissants, cake, ice cream, candy, etc… On one of the first weeks of trying to eat more intuitively, my husband and I stopped at the Sultan Bakery in Sultan, WA and I purchased an Apple Fritter because it sounded really good. I love apple fritters, but they had been in the absolutely-do-not-eat-this category for a very long time. I’m embarrassed to admit that it was weird to buy an apple fritter… because really, what’s it going to do? Attack me?
Aaron and I sat in my car at a trailhead and I nervously opened the crinkled apple fritter package… I broke off a piece of the fritter and plopped it into my mouth, chewing with my eyes closed. The deliciousness enveloped my senses as I nibbled on the divine dough. I took a few bites… and then… very weirdly, I was done. I didn’t really need anymore of it. I saved it for later, and I don’t think I even finished it.
As I progressed with my intuitive eating, I discovered that I was able to tell when I was satisfied while eating… and also tell when I was hungry. When I was hungry, I ate food — which sounds unbelievably obvious, but for somebody who had been starving themselves for most of the day, it did not come naturally for me. Now, I’m at a point where I eat when I’m hungry and stop when I’m satisfied. If something sounds good to me, I eat it. I even eat when I’m not hungry sometimes, but I don’t make myself feel guilty about it afterwards (like I used to). I eat anything that I want, when I want to eat it — and I really think that the lack of deprivation (i.e. demonizing food as ‘bad’) has been a huge part of finding freedom. Weirdly enough, when I started allowing myself to eat anything…. I discovered that I really didn’t want to eat apple fritters all day long. But… if I do want them… they are there for me.
All of this being said… I do have another desert that I look forward to almost as much as my weekly cookie. Every single night I make a yogurt and berry granola parfait that is absolutely delicious. It consists of: yogurt, cinnamon, caramel syrup to sweeten the yogurt, strawberries, frozen berries, homemade granola, and Hershey’s chocolate syrup. I make a bowl of berries and yogurt almost every night of the week for my husband and I, and it has become our evening ‘wind down’ ritual to have this snack before we go to bed. I really look forward to it, so I never feel like I’m missing out on a cookie.
For the record, the granola that I make is this recipe: Eleven Madison Park Granola
I use way less salt than recommended. I add vanilla extract and 1 tsp cinnamon to my olive oil/maple/brown sugar mixture. I usually make my granola almost entirely oatmeal + coconut shreds - I don’t add a lot of nuts to it. It’s really delicious, and so easy to make!
3. What is the story behind the KVLA CLOTH blue sign?
If you follow me on Instagram, than you have probably seen the blue KVLA CLOTH sign that sits above the Lauren Echo mural that is painted on the interior of my small garage (which has been converted into my dance studio/office).
Earlier this year, Kula Cloth adopted a few sections of the Mountain Loop Highway, which is a really beautiful road that connects Granite Falls, Washington with Darrington, Washington. The Mountain Loop Highway provides access to many world class hiking destinations in WA - most notably, Mt. Dickerman, Mt. Pilchuck, Gothic Basin, Vesper Peak, and Glacier Peak.
When you adopt a highway, you get one of those cool signs on the side of the road that has the name of your company or organization on it. Out of the blue one day, I got a message on Instagram from somebody who works for Snohomish County with a photo of the KVLA CLOTH sign. Apparently, he knew of me and of Kula Cloth… and he knew we had adopted the road. Well, somebody had misread the Adopt-A-Highway application, and they thought the ‘U’ in ‘Kula’ was a ‘V’ - oops! Luckily, this kind soul spotted the mistake before the signs were all made and posted… and he was kind enough to give it to me (since I thought it was so funny). Not only that, but they made me an extra KULA CLOTH sign and even wrote me a really sweet note on the back!
Adopting a highway has been a fun, rewarding project that I never imagined I’d do. We now have adopted 3 sections of the Mountain Loop Highway, and we’ve removed close to around 1,000lbs of garbage. When our first work group ventured out for a clean up, the road was bad. It is shocking how many BUZZ BALLS and vodka bottles are lying on the side of the road. It’s also a little bit sad, and it definitely doesn’t represent the Mountain Loop Highway very well. This is a special place, and it deserves to be cared for. We’ve done two clean ups since we adopted the road, and I’m looking forward to going back and doing another one soon.
If you do live locally, watch our events calendar for the next clean up - I provide free Kulas to everybody who participates as a thank you!
4. Is there a magical story about how you came to find Kula's new fulfillment center? I recall you speaking out into the world your intention and being open to possibilities about how this may come to be. I followed your lead and am trying this approach as I pursue purchasing my first house. If there's any inspiration to be gleaned from how this unfolded for you, I'd love to know!
As some of you know, I’ve been searching for a Kula Fulfillment Center for almost a year - and just this week, we moved into our new office space!
Here’s a short history of Kula’s office spaces:
The first Kula Office was the office in my house in Everett. I started doing fulfillment out of one room, and my husband and I would sit on the floor and pack orders together. Since we were the only people doing fulfillment, if we went on vacation, we had to take my computer, a label printer, and a small supply of Kulas with us so that we could ship orders on the road.
After a few months, it became a bit overwhelming for me to try and fulfill orders all the time, so I moved our order fulfillment to a 3PL (Third Party Logistics) company. This is a giant warehouse that you pay to store your stuff and pack your orders for you. When an order came in on the Kula website, it was automatically sent to the 3PL fulfillment center. This sounds great, but there were some definite disadvantages: if somebody made a mistake in their order, it was difficult to cancel the order and fix the address, which resulted in shipping out a lot of products that got returned and/or lost. If people wrote nice notes in their order, there was no way for us to write back to them. If we launched a new product, it took a few weeks for the product to be shipped to the warehouse, counted into inventory, and available for purchase. There was also no way for us to pre-inspect the product and bag them in their individual bags before they were shipped, so the Kulas were being shipped ‘loose’ in a mailer. When people opened the mailer with scissors, they often cut the strap off the Kula. While it was really helpful in the beginning, ultimately, working with a 3PL was causing more work than it was saving.
So, I did the ‘wild’ thing… and I paid a lot of money to have all of the Kula inventory sent back to me, and I decided to start doing fulfillment again. This was also very hectic, because my husband and I had just moved into a new house. We turned our guest bedroom into the Kula Fulfillment Zone, and I had boxes of Kulas spread out all over the floor, and I would sit at a TV tray and individually reach down and grab the Kulas and package them… and then take everything to the post office in the afternoon.
Eventually, I realized that I wasn’t able to handle that. I hired one of my neighbors (who is still working for me 2 years later!) to start helping me inspect the Kulas and package them… and then I hired an assistant to start helping with fulfillment. My husband and I converted one bay of our shop into a small fulfillment center, and we had all of the Kula inventory packed from floor to ceiling into a 200 sq ft office. To say that it was packed is the understatement of the century. Not only that, but I also used this little office as my dance studio for The Dance Experiment, so every morning, I’d roll the shelves away from the garage door so that I had a clear dance space… and then I’d roll them back before my employees arrived for the day.
We’ve recently added a lot of new products, which means we need more space… and, if I’m being completely honest, I really wanted my house back. I love the people who work for me… but having a fulfillment center at your house is a lot of work… and it also means that I had absolutely no break from Kula… ever. So, I started looking for a small place that we could move into… and quickly realized that Granite Falls, Washington was not a hot bed of commercial real estate. The only properties in Granite Falls that I discovered were 10,000 sq ft. industrial warehouses … and one property that was occupied by a hoarder, who told me that he’d sell me the building, but that he’d need 6 months to leave (I later learned that he did sell the building… and legal action needed to be taken in order to get him to vacate the building).
When you are somewhere that you do not want to be… it’s very easy to look at that. It would have been very easy to tell myself that I’d be happier once we found our fulfillment center… but I really and honestly just tried to be completely satisfied with where I was, in every moment. I’d go out into my tiny little 200 sq ft office and I’d think, “Wow - this is so cool. A few years ago, I was sitting on the floor of a bedroom… and now, I have this whole office set up with shelves and inventory!”
While I practiced gratitude for my small space every day, I also started thinking about and talking about the new space too — and not in a ‘needy’ way, but in an excited way. I’d say things like, “I’m not sure how it will happen, but I can’t wait!” I honestly didn’t know what it’d look like, but I felt pretty sure that I’d know where it was when it arrived. And, in true Anastasia fashion, it arrived in a very unexpected way.
A few months ago, my husband and I had a date to meet our neighbors for dinner, so we decided to ride our motorcycles to meet them. About half way there, we were accelerating on a small-ish state highway, when I noticed that Aaron’s rear tire looked strange… and he was going 40 mph in a 55 mph zone. “Are you ok?”, I asked over our helmet intercoms. “Something is wrong,” he responded… quickly and smoothly pulling over to the side of the road. As it turned out, he had a flat rear tire on his motorcycle. We were able to push the bikes off the road, and we found a safe spot to sit on the other side of a guardrail while we waited for 2 hours for the tow truck driver to arrive.
Those two hours were a funny thing, because I know that ‘old Anastasia’ would not have handled them well. Old Anastasia would have been upset about missing dinner… would have been completely freaked out about the flat tire… and would have been irritated to sit on the side of the road in 85 degrees weather to wait for a tow truck. As we nestled ourselves into a prickly bed of dead grass, weeds and an occasional miniature vodka bottle that had been tossed out of a passing car… I started looking around. Across from where we were sitting, was the most beautiful tree - I don’t even know what kind of tree it was, but as the wind blew, the leaves shimmered green and silver in the bright light of the afternoon sun. Aaron and I sat there for awhile and I closed my eyes and I focused on my breathing. I watched the tree, and listened to the birds who were gleefully chirping nearby. I laughed a little bit as I quoted Eckhart Tolle, “I’m just sitting here… in joy in myself!”. Aaron smiled back, “We’re just sitting here, breathing.” I can’t describe the feeling of peace that overcame me as we sat on the side of that highway, but it was truly a feeling of not needing to be anywhere else. In my heart, I couldn’t explain it — but I had an odd sensation that something good was about to happen.
When the driver arrived, he was amazingly helpful and he and Aaron headed back to our house in the tow truck, while I rode my motorcycle back home to meet them. After we got home Aaron said, “Hey, I mentioned Kula to the tow truck driver, and he told me that you should look on Craigs List for commercial property to rent.”
“Weird”, I said. In the year of looking for a new office space, it hadn’t even dawned on me to look on Craigs List. Why? To be honest, I have no idea. Most of you have read the story about The Musical Mountaineers, and how posting a Craigslist ad for myself as an ‘adventure elopement violinist’ was a big step in my ‘figure this out’ journey. I felt slightly stupefied that I had never even considered looking at Craigslist. Immediately, I logged onto Craigslist… and I am not joking when I say that the first building that I saw available is the building that we just moved into this past week. It’s quirky… it’s a little weird… it’s still small… but it’s perfect for where we are right now. I can’t explain how I know this, but for some reason, when I saw the building, I felt like it was in some way, supposed to be a part of our journey.
I don’t think that it is going to be the final destination for Kula Cloth. I have a grand vision for a pretty special building that I want to design and build …
Do I know how this new building will come to fruition? Do I know how I’m going to pay for it … or how I’m going to design it… or where it will be… or how it could even be possible? Absolutely not. And you know what? If I tried to know those things, I’d be cutting myself off from the infinite ways in which this building could arrive… and I really, really love the infinite. The infinite is so much more fun than the finite. Here’s an example of the finite:
I have to sell a certain number of Kulas, reach certain targets, hit certain sales goals, be earning a certain amount of money per month, have a specific amount of money in my bank account and then and only then… after lots of time has passed… I will be able to purchase this building.
And here’s the infinite at work:
There are infinite ways that abundance can flow to me in surprisingly easy and effortless ways. This new building can arrive at any time of any day — there are no limits on how it can arrive or where it will arrive or when. I am open to all of the ways in which this building can enter my life, and I look forward to watching it happen!
I also have a practice of visualizing and allowing myself to really see something, as if it is real right now. So, if you are currently in the process of visualizing a new home or place to live or rent, I’d recommend that you try doing something similar:
Make a vision board of your new home
Be as specific as you want, if it feels good and fun for you
Close your eyes and see yourself in your new place, and pay attention to how you feel
As you notice how you feel… are there things that you are currently doing in your life that elicit a similar feeling?
If so, do those things - they don’t need to have anything to do with finding your house
Don’t try to figure out the details of how this house is going to arrive
If you feel a little nudge or impulse to do something, listen to your nudge or impulse
Look for the gold in unexpected moments (for instance, it would have been pretty easy for Aaron and I to be frustrated about the flat tire after waiting for 2 hours on the side of the road… which might not have elicited the conversation that ultimately led to the discovery of our new building)
If something feels good, trust your intuition!
Open your mind BEYOND the known ways in which a house can arrive.
Since we are talking about houses, I’ll give you one more example — and maybe you’ve heard this one before, but I think it bears repeating, because it’s a powerful example of what is possible when you focus on what you want to create… without needing to know how it is possible.
When I started ‘this process’ (a loose term) of creating my own life (as opposed to living a life of reactivity/autopilot), I decided that I wanted to start thinking about the home where I eventually wanted to live. I found photos of houses that I liked on the internet, and I added them to my ‘Statement of Fact’ that I put on our fridge. In the Statement of Fact, I described the house in specific detail:
We live in an open concept home that is rustic and modern. Our bedroom is surrounded by massive windows and it looks out over a lake or mountains. There is a stone fireplace. The kitchen is open and there is a gas range.
In addition to this description, I started doing daily Ideal Day meditations, where I would visually walk myself through a ‘day in the life’ of my ideal self. In these meditations, I saw myself waking up in a bedroom, surrounded by big windows. I saw a porch with an overhanging roof (so that I could sit outside in the rain)… I saw a lake… and I saw large boulders by the lake so that I could sit and meditate. I had absolutely no idea how any of this was possible. At the time, my husband and I lived in a very urban neighborhood in Everett, Washington. Our backyard had no grass in it, and we couldn’t open our window shades, because our neighbors would be able to look directly into our bedroom.
This video was filmed in my back yard in Everett, WA. If you’ve never watched it … it’s pretty hilarious, thanks to Niko the cat (just wait for it… ha!). We recorded this video as a soundtrack for a video that was played at my grandmother’s memorial.
As time went on, I continued my visualizations, but I really released the need for this new place. I started to feel a deep sense of peace exactly where I was. When things shut down during COVID, I was able to really slow down my lifestyle and let go of the need to be going somewhere all the time. Namely, I was able to find the feeling of the new place that I wanted to create. I even started doing meditations while waiting at crosswalks on busy roads — I’d close my eyes as I waited for the light to change, and I’d just feel the sensation of all of the energy of life that was buzzing around me. I experienced some of the most peaceful meditations of my life with traffic whizzing by and horns honking. I started to understand that peace was not dependent on this new house… peace was something that I had within me.
Completely out of the blue one day, I opened up the Zillow app. I have no idea why I did this, because we weren’t even really considering purchasing a home. As I looked at homes for sale in our area… I saw a house that has just been listed that day. It was a two bedroom cabin… on a lake. “We have to go look at it!”, I told my husband. He was hesitant, since it was only two bedrooms, but we decided to check it out.
The day that we visited the house was cold and blustery — there was a storm, and the realtor had us park our vehicles along the road in front of the house. We walked out to a small beach area on the lake and looked around. The wind was so vicious that there were whitecaps on the lake… rain pelted us as we looked around… it felt like we had stepped into a magical, alpine wilderness. “Where are we?!”, I excitedly whispered at Aaron. I couldn’t help but notice the huge boulders that were perched in front of the lake… perfect meditation rocks.
Cinder, our Siberian Forest Cat in her happy place (the lake!) on a paddleboard.
Within moments of entering the home, I had the strangest feeling… I had been here before. And no, I had never actually been to the home, but I had a distinct feeling that I had been here in my mind. The house itself was open and spacious — one entire side of the home is all windows, including the master bedroom. In the living room? A stone fireplace. The back porch? A huge overhanging roof is the main feature of the back porch so that you can… you guessed it.. sit outside when it’s raining.
We put in an offer on the house that day… and listed our house in Everett four days later. Miraculously, everything worked relatively seamlessly… and on July 31 of 2020, we moved into our cabin on the lake… which has served as the Kula Fulfillment HQ since the day we arrived.
The other day, as we moved a bajillion Kulas and all of our equipment over to the new location, I felt an unexpected twinge of sadness… it felt really weird to bring all of the Kula stuff to a new location. Kula has been in my home since the very beginning, and I barely remember what it is like to have a home that isn’t also a warehouse. I can’t even begin to count the nights that I spent listening to podcasts and trying to teach myself how to sew prototypes until 2am while my husband worked nightshift at the railroad. It feels exciting, refreshing and real to have an office space that is outside of my home. It feels peaceful to have my home… as a home. This cabin is a very special place to me… it is a magical place that reminds me that all things are possible. My happiest moments are taking my morning walks and then coming back to the house and simply sitting on the bed in the morning, looking out at the forest and the lake, and doing a meditation with my husband while our cats attempt to sabotage it by climbing all over us. Since the day that we moved in, this home has also been a business… and I’m really looking forward to it being a home.
If you are a person who has not yet found your home — please know that it is out there… but it is also in here <points to heart>. It’s easy to want to start the process of finding something by looking outside of yourself, but I encourage you to start the process by looking within. Find the feeling of home within your heart, and know that it is something generated by you. Use that feeling as your guide, and see where it leads you. Maybe it seems far-fetched that I’m saying this from a place of having a home…. but please know that I did not always live here, and I have not always felt like I was home. In fact, there were many times that I looked around at where I was… and wondered… How did I end up HERE?
I spent a lot of time looking… and searching… and wishing that I was someplace different than where I was. Ultimately, the search for something beyond ourselves will lead us back to who we are … and when we come back to that feeling of love, new doors will open as the cosmos lays out a welcome mat as if to say You do belong here. You are home.
Somehow, I got off on a very long tangent to tell the story about the Kula HQ… which is the new home for Kula’s fulfillment center. It’s a big step for our small company, and it feels good and right to be here. When my husband and I were unpacking this past weekend and setting up furniture, I took the time to look around at this new space — with all of its quirkiness and imperfections. I put on some music, and I danced around the room, while simultaneously bopping my head on a lone lightbulb that hangs down in the fulfillment area (very reminiscent of the modern art piece I mentioned in my Burrito gallery post - coincidentally enough!). I look around me at the shelves and bins that contain hundreds and hundreds of Kulas - waiting to go to their new homes and I can’t help but think…. Well, wouldn’t you know it… Kula Cloth started in a home… and it always finds its way to a home. And in between? And afterwards? I’m pretty sure that’s an adventure that is still writing itself… I look outside my little window and I can see that the trees are still shimmering all around me. I can’t wait to see what happens next.
Friends - thank you so much for being here and for being a part of my Kula journey… and for being a part of this beautiful little writing project that is such a special part of my week. Thank you for allowing me to share my words, photographs, stories, and deep thoughts with all of you. I am wishing you all ease, peace and abundance and a sense of belonging, exactly where you are. You are loved, friends.
Love,
Anastasia
P.S. If you have a question, comment or anything else… you can submit it through the Kula Diaries Google Vault. It is anonymous, so if you want a response, please include your e-mail address.
Love it! Congratulations on the new fulfillment center, so exciting!! And I loved the concert video too 🐈