September always feels like a beginning.
More so than January, if I'm honest. January is just cold and dark and full of resolutions nobody asked for. September has something else to it - a sharpness in the air, a sense of things starting up again after a slower stretch. As a teacher it's been that way my whole life, and running Three Trees hasn't changed it. If anything it's doubled it.
This September, the beginning comes with two events in the same weekend.
The first is familiar. Getting back to the craft fair circuit after the summer break has a particular feeling - unpacking the boxes, checking the stock levels, making sure nothing has been dented or damaged in storage, laying out the table and stepping back to see if it still looks right. It usually needs adjusting. It always comes together.
There's something I've come to genuinely love about selling in person that no amount of website traffic quite replicates. When someone picks up a candle at a market stall, turns it over in their hands, lifts it to smell it - something real is happening. A decision is being made not in front of a screen but in front of the actual object, and when that decision goes in Three Trees' favour, it means something different to an online order. Not more, exactly. Just different.
I've missed that over the summer. I didn't expect to quite as much as I have.
The second event is new. Entirely new.
Three Trees will be at the Chatsworth Country Fair for the first time this September, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous about it.
Chatsworth House is - well, it's Chatsworth. One of the great houses of England, sitting in the Peak District with the kind of effortless grandeur that makes you simultaneously awed and slightly convinced you've accidentally wandered somewhere you shouldn't be. The Country Fair is one of the biggest events of its kind, drawing crowds from across the country over three days.
It's the largest event Three Trees has ever been part of.
I've been thinking about it for weeks. What to bring, how much stock to take, how to set up a stall that does justice to the setting without trying too hard. How to talk about the candles to people who might never have heard of Three Trees and have no particular reason to stop. How to feel like I belong in a space that size when there's still a part of me that feels like someone who started making candles on their kitchen table not very long ago.
That part doesn't go away. But I've learned it doesn't have to. It's just the voice that comes with trying something new - the same voice that said don't bother applying for the Small Business Award, the same voice that said nobody will buy handmade candles when they can get them cheaper elsewhere. It has a lot of opinions. It hasn't been right yet.
So September begins with two markets, one familiar and one entirely unknown, and Three Trees somewhere in the middle of both - packed up, labelled, ready.
If you're going to be at Chatsworth Country Fair this September, come and find us. There will be candles. There will probably be a slightly overwhelmed person behind the table who is very glad you stopped.
That'll be me.
Three Trees Candle Co. will be at the Chatsworth Country Fair from 4th to 6th September. Find us in the Cottage Industries tent — and browse the full collection at threetreescandle.co.