Return of the Yarn

It feels like an age ago that it was spring shearing time.  Like now, the mornings were chilly but the sun was bright.  The sheep were poofy fluff balls, ready to take off their winter coats in preparation for summer. For days, I’d worked through the mountains of raw, sticky wool, sorting and pulling out debris, packing it tightly into …

Introducing Tapestry Prompts

 I have many great memories over writing prompts with my wordy friends.  We’d all gather up prompts (as simple as a single word like “red” or as nuanced as “the way the light comes in through the window”) and tuck them all into a basket.  Then we’d pull one out and, without overthinking the process, write like mad for …

Building a Tapestry Pedagogy

It was late summer of 1998, and I was just about to turn 13, when my mom asked me if an enrichment course through the Madison Area Technical College on Navajo tapestry weaving might be of interest.  We had just begun our homeschooling adventures together, transitioning from Montessori schools to our own version of Montessori-infused unschooling.  We had recently spent …

A Mountain of Wool

Chris’ telltale greenish-gray truck pulls into the barnyard early in the morning as we’re doing chores.  Shearing season once again has arrived on the farm, and the 120-odd sheep are ready.  As the temperatures tentatively climb out of the deep freeze, their heavy wool coats will soon be too intense for their comfort. In the wild, sheep naturally shed their …

Creativity Vs. Productivity–Yin and Yang

I was a bright-eyed fourth grader the summer we stopped by the gift shop in Wisconsin Dells where my mom’s younger brother had a summer job.  I had a tiny bit of spending money, and I picked out a necklace for myself—a silvery yin yang pendant embedded with shell inlay dyed maroon and a bluish teal.  It was one of …

Inheritor of Stashes

The stash. I wish there was a prettier word for it, maybe something that sounds a bit more French?  Even horde sounds at least medieval or fantasy oriented to describe an assemblage of art or craft supplies, but “stash” seems to have become the term of choice. On the other hand, I don’t want to think of it as hoarding, …

Facing Your Project UFOs

For many of us, the term UFO conjures images of disk-shaped alien space craft with blinking lights and eerie music, but for creative makers, we have a different use for this acronym—Un-Finished Object.  A creative UFO is a different critter from the other acronym WIPs, or Works In Progress.  A WIP is something you’re actively working on—you know where you’re …

I Made a Thing, Now What?

Creating can be so much fun–invigorating, stimulating, and able to make hours disappear like mere minutes.  If you’re like me and a prolific creator (or you’ve been taking a host of my Zoom classes lately), you are probably creating quite a collection of items you’ve made.  Now, what to do with all this creative wonderfulness?  The answer is that there …

Joyful Lifelong Learning

I’m not much for watching TV, as you might have surmised.  The few winter evenings we do watch a program, it’s almost always a documentary, preempted by someone calling out, “Let’s learn something!” Learning, in our house, was not something you did only during school hours—it was a part of everyday life that was encouraged and celebrated.  Mom read to …

The Yurt is Back!

I would not fit well into a tiny house.  For one thing, I own 15 different weaving looms—in all shapes and sizes.  Floor looms, upright tapestry looms, table looms, a triangular shawl loom, round looms, Navajo looms…they all serve to create different types of textiles and are part of my growing assembly of looms available for instructing students (once it …