My Yearly Creative Escape and Why the Business Doesn’t Fall Apart

This is an extract from our Studio Dispatch from 9th January 2026.

In between all the creative inspiration, we also want to share something just as important - the behind-the-scenes of our business. Whether you're a creative, a small business owner, thinking about making the leap, or just plain curious, this section is where Eppie goes into the realities of The Fabled Thread. From the highs and lows of the creative process to the commercial realities of running a business, we’ll talk candidly about the decisions we’re making, big and small.

Not many businesses share this side of things, but we wish more did. These articles won’t be for everyone, but for those they do resonate with, we hope they offer real insight.

One of the things that can really unsettle a female founded business when the founder has a child is the sudden lack of physical presence. Since Sasha arrived, I have been in the studio far less than I usually would be, and from the outside it might look as though that would create a real strain for us. The assumption is that a founder needs to be there in person, day in and day out, to keep everything moving. So I wanted to write about what it actually looks like to run a growing, ambitious business while working remotely for long stretches of time.

From the very beginning, I built the business with the intention that I should not need to be physically present all the time. It was not some clever long term strategy, just the reality of how my life worked, and it meant that this has been one of the least complicated adjustments since having Sasha. The team is very used to me working elsewhere. In the first few years, I would spend six to eight weeks every winter away in the mountains, and that rhythm shaped the way we operated. We became accustomed to communicating clearly, planning properly, and keeping things moving without me sitting in the same room.

As you read this article, I will be about to go on my annual trip to the mountains to spend the first month of the year working away. So this article is for anyone who is curious about the practicalities of running a small business when the founder is not always in the studio. It is a look at how we make it work, what helps, what surprised me, and how a way of working that began for entirely unrelated reasons has turned out to be one of our greatest strengths.