Hey pals,

I wrote the pretty-much-final draft of this email back at the beginning of July, just a short few weeks after sending a newsletter for the first time in about three years. I then (obviously, since I am writing to you in September) procrastinated for several months putting the finishing touches on it, ie. finding photos of various art endeavors for it. This has really been a problem for me in recent years. My patience and energy for photography file maintenance and organization has become almost zero. Oh well. Regardless, I am still hopeful that newsletter will be back for real after this. Fingers crossed.

For those of you who are new here, the thing that is “back” is my (Julien of Rose Acolyte’s) diary-newsletter “Why Am I Making This”, which I started in 2020 and wrote monthly until the beginning of 2023 (the archives, if you are interested, are here). I took a long break until last month, when I wanted to let my longtime newsletter-followers know about a trial mail club that I did in June, where I sent out a little zine and print to people. (Thank you to those of you who signed up after I sent the last newsletter!!! I was really so so happy that you were interested!!!)

Anyway, “Why Am I Making This” is not really a typical “newsletter” where someone sends out updates about new products, events, etc. In fact it is pretty much useless for finding out what I will be doing in the near future or where you can buy things of mine or anything like that. Instead it is a kind of navel-gaze-y look-back on the previous month (or in this case, three years haha) of my art activities and related existential crises.

I really like these kinds of newsletters when I get them from other people, and people have told me that they really like mine, which warms my heart. So I don’t want to change it to be more about like, the stuff I’m selling and “oh go buy my stuff” “here are the places I’m going to be selling things at soon” etc etc. (I am really sick of being advertised to online lately, can you tell?)

HOWEVER, I have actually been making and selling more things in the past year or so (I am starting a little stationery-designing experiment! I am making ceramic illustrated magnets and selling them in various places! I plan to open an online shop later this month or possibly in August!) and I would like to be able to tell people about those things somewhere other than Instagram (I know many of you aren’t even on there!)

So I am going to make a separate mailing list for those kinds of selling-stuff updates. Because it will still be written by me, it will probably remain pretty un-sales-y and probably have a nonzero amount of existential crisis in it, but it will be more irregular and I will send an email whenever I do have something to announce like a shop opening or market schedule.

The new newsletter WILL NOT have:

• Pictures of all the miscellaneous stuff I’ve been doing

• Extensive tours of my art-related struggle bus

The new newsletter WILL let you know:

• When I am finally opening my online shop so you can buy things for yourself or as gifts for your friends/family even if you don't live in Maine

• When I open sign-ups for another mail club

• What upcoming craft markets I am going to be at

YOU CAN SIGN UP FOR THE NEW SHOP/MARKET UPDATE NEWSLETTER HERE IF YOU ARE INTERESTED.

Alrighty. Now that that that’s out of the way, let me copy and paste the 2023-2026 update roundup that I wrote back in January so you can hear about what the heck I have been doing in the last few years.

SCENE BREAK

This is at least the fourth time I have attempted to wake up my newsletter from its long hibernation. This time I’m going to try really hard to finish writing this letter, which means letting go of any wish to catch you all up on absolutely everything I have been up to in the last two to three years. So let’s get right into it and I’m sure I’ll hit some of the highlights.

Pottery

Unfortunately, I have been in something of a pottery slump for the past year+ (!) but I have not actually given up on it, which is kind of amazing. I constantly feel just on the verge of quitting pottery, but I haven’t done it yet.

In the middle of 2023, shortly after pausing this newsletter, I started to get quite ambitious about pottery. I had made up my new little brand name, “Rose Acolyte”, and wanted to get more of a handle on how much pottery I was making and how long different pieces took me to make, so that I could see how feasible (financially and temporally) it would be to try to sell a lot of pottery at some point in the future.

So in 2024, I tracked my pottery hours and took notes in a spreadsheet until April or so. Then I went on vacation and gave up. So I’ve pretty much been in a pottery slump since then, as I felt that it was maybe pointless for me to pursue pottery “seriously” (note that this was not because of my actual numbers tracked in the spreadsheet, but because of some nebulous “vibe”).

Luckily though, I do like going to the pottery studio, and the people do still show a moderate interest in buying my pottery whenever I am at a craft market. (And some of my pottery is for sale on a standing basis in one of my very favorite local cafes, Coveside Coffee, which also gives me a bit of a boost.)

Here’s a very scattered and incomplete few pictures of the stuff I’ve made in the last two years. I would love to do a more detailed think-back over my pottery eras but in the interest of finishing this newsletter I am not going to do that now.

Painting

I have done a relatively tiny amount of painting from 2023-2026. I wish I had the time and energy to do more painting but I’m always doing all the other things listed in this newsletter instead.

I have done one or two painting studies that I would love to do something with but that I of course haven’t done anything with yet. I’ve also done like two huge paintings which have been fun but I also am not sure how to be interested in doing more of this.

Video Games

For a quick second (June-August 2024) I got really into making video games again and made a new tiny game in Godot 4 called “Berry Quest”. You can play it online in your browser here.

Then I started working on a slightly larger game and, you guessed it, gave up on it. Here’s some UI design from that one:

Photography

Like almost everything else, photography has been on a sort of hiatus. I unpaused myself on photography for a few trips over my newsletter break - California and Portugal in 2023, and Japan in 2024.

In late 2024 I was the photography coordinator for my own wedding-ish party, and in 2025 I did wedding photography for some close friends who got married in October and June.

Other than that, not much day to day photography. I struggle with the computer organization aspect of it because I spend so much time on the computer for my day job. And I have finally accepted about myself that I really don’t like doing commissioned work, which includes all photography gigs for clients, so until that aspect of me changes I think I am just going to be a photography hobbyist.

Textiles

This is definitely the most active topic in the list. I did a lot of different textile activities (quilting, sewing, fabric painting, needlepoint + needlepoint design) in 2025-2026. Here are a few photos of quilts and quilted goods:

A big big thing for me in 2025-2026 was needlepoint. If you don’t know, or don’t follow me on social media where I yap about it endlessly, needlepoint is a counted embroidery (like a cousin of cross stitch) that has had kind of a resurgence in popularity since 2020 or so. I got into it in 2023 at the suggestion of my cousin, who works at a needlepoint store. I did it casually throughout 2024, then at the beginning of 2025 was very fortunate to have Abbey from Saturnalia Stitching encourage me to join her design group, where she could publish my designs as painted canvases for people to sell.

So my designs have been available through her line since last June, and it has been really rewarding seeing them make their way out into the world! I have pictures of a lot of my needlepoint designs on my website needlepoint page, too.

What’s next

It feels like things have changed a lot for me, art-business-wise, in the past few years while I’ve been missing from this newsletter (but also it isn’t as though I have actually become a successful art business or become famous in any way, lol). It does feel like I am kind of honing in on my signature style. I think we’ll keep moving down that road, with needlepoint especially (but who knows what else) in the rest of 2026.

I am really out of practice talking about my creative activities. I feel weirdly self conscious and like I can’t get my thoughts into a good bundle for you all, which is probably why I’ve put off sending out this newsletter for so long! But I want to get back into the habit of it, because I’d really like to be able to get my art thoughts out of my head.

I’m not exactly promising that I will strictly send this newsletter monthly again, but I’m going to try to do something like that. Talk to you soon.

Julien