Healing Handcrafting

Monthly Archives: March 2025


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Monday’s Musings~ Weaving Your Story is Online!

Dear god, I say “ummmm” too much!

Why do I know this? 

Because I’m getting ready to teach my first online class that involves a lot of videos. And, as I’ve been editing them, I’ve realized, wow, I really do say “ummmm” a whole lot. It’s such a good place holder for my mouth when I need to catch up with my thoughts, but not ideal to listen to! I’m very grateful for iMovie editing features!

I’m also extremely grateful for…

~ The chance to bring Weaving Your Story to more people~ this is a class I built, drawing together my passions from years of work and study, both as a therapist and as a weaver. I feel so strongly about what weaving offers to people, aesthetically, emotionally, in community. 

~ The Shelburne Craft School, and especially its director, Heather Moore, who right out of the gate expressed interest in the way I use weaving in my work with people, and wondered if we might build a class around it. And that’s just what we did! Through that process, I’ve learned about writing grants and partnering with other organizations, while expanding my own skill set as I’ve offered this work to a larger group. I’ve also gotten to teach a dear friend and colleague, Ali Waltien, how to offer Weaving Your Story in her work. How amazing!

~

~ The Vermont Arts Council, who awarded us the Creative Aging grant.  

~ An anonymous donor who has made the class available to even more people.

~ Weaving Your Story participants who take the leap into weaving… well…  their stories! This takes courage, patience, trust, and flexibility, and with every single group, I learn and grow. 

~ My weaving teachers, Lausanne Allen, Susan Barrett Merrill, Rebecca Mezoff, Elizabeth Buckley, and Susan Powers, … I’m so fortunate to have these people as part of my weaving journey. They share and encourage, inspire, and know their craft inside and out.

~ My daughter who has been helping me learn how to make and edit videos, export, upload and put into the airwaves the online version of the class. 

That all reads like an acceptance speech! Seriously though, I’d be remiss to talk about the Weaving Your Story classes without expressing all the gratitude I feel for those who have given so much to me, so there we are. 

Now, back to editing my videos! If I can reduce my “ummmmms” by 75% or more, I think it’ll be okay. 

Weave me a rope that will pull me through these impossible times.

~ from, Not Even Close, Tim Finn


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The Creative Process~ Article Published!

I’m delighted to share that an article I was invited to work on with the director of the Shelburne Craft School, Heather Moore, has been published in the IMAG #18 periodical from InSEA publications. It’s called, “Who Cares How it Comes Out? Pinhole Camera as Teacher and Muse”. You can find it here! It was a marvelous process, working on such an important-to-me project. The more I think about creativity, the more I think it is an essential and critical part of being human and that it ought never be treated as an afterthought. We’ve, as a species, been articulating our ideas and inspirations for millennia. To be able to think and write about how the creative process fosters community, empathy, enthusiasm, and engagement was a real pleasure. I hope you like it!


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Happy Spring

Took a long walk today at beautiful Shelburne Farms.

Picked up some weather worn sticks.

Stared at a pileated woodpecker while it went about its business.

Felt the warm, wet wind, and exhaled.

Made eye contact with a cow.

Communed with a robin.

Greeted a cardinal.

Listened to people laugh.

Sent many wishes into the sky.

Noticed the osprey aren’t back on their perch yet.

Heard an eagle in the distance.

Thought about my next weaving project and the steep learning curve I’ll surmount to make it.

It will be red.


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Beautiful Weaving Quote

For one of the classes I teach, I gather quotes that capture the symbolism of weaving and how it describes so much of our experience of life. I’d love to start sharing what I find here.

We all belong to the same beautiful tapestry of existence, and our lives are all woven together to create the magical experience of life. None of us are alone, or solitary, or unimportant- we’re all part of something that is vastly bigger than ourselves but, at the same time, comprises each of our individual energies. We are forever interconnected, and these connections are more awe inspiring and more powerful than we can even fathom.

~ Laura Lynne Jackson, “Signs: The Secret Language of the Universe”


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Monday’s Musings: Neck Pain & Looms

I haven’t been able to weave lately because of a back/neck injury I sustained one month ago tomorrow. As I’ve worked to get back in touch with my body and what it’s communicating to me (if only I’d listen!), I’ve been thinking a lot my looms and which one will be my entryway back into weaving.

I think for the sake of my back, I’ll start weaving again on this wonderful one from Lost Pond Looms. I am planning on using this loom in both my Introduction to Tapestry Weaving Classes and Wild Weaving classes, as we phase out the ones we have been using. I like this loom because it is super strong and allows for different warp spacing. I also love that we are buying it directly from the person who makes them, and he’s from the next state over in NY.

So, taking it slow, and learning ever more to listen to the language of my body and woven form itself. And in the meantime, I’m circling my weaving tools, thinking about what they will hold soon, and looking forward to picking up my yarn again.

Here’s another Lost Pond Loom as well as a shed stick from Threads Thru Time and an itty bitty loom from Stephen Willette.


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America’s Shadow

The Shadow of America has burst forth,
Hideous in full form,
Visible to the world.
Not for the first time,
But still, this time too
Is trying our souls.
Many have known this Shadow.
Those able to see have recognized it,
Studied it,
Preached, sung, written of it.
Courageous vilified for naming it.
Truth-sayers killed for challenging it, taking it to court.
Those countless murdered by Shadow’s effects on humans in righteous denial,
Their blood is on our hands,
Fostering dis-ease until we ease ourselves into taking it on, this Shadow-illness
That, when denied becomes more itself,
Tyrannical.
To know is to descend into darkness,
Where ancient Destruction lives,
With Her corpse wall hooks,
And His poison.
No wonder there is turning away.
To face Shadow is the stuff of legend.
Legend’s heroes have scars, every one,
Valiantly earned,
Skin debt paid in the quest towards light.
The lid is blown off this American dream.
Now we must, oh we must!
Welcome the cracked open broken heart that comes with Shadow
As it swirls and climbs,
Snuffing out white-washed lies,
Engorged on delicious ignorance,
Creating and co-creating with light
Something new.
A new table where all have a place,
Eyes looking into eyes, with recognition, sorrow, love.
This time,
And again,
It is an invitation.

b. mccabe hansen

Notes:

“With Her corpse wall hooks”; references Ereshkigal, Mesopotamian goddess of death and the underworld who hangs sister/goddess Inanna on wall hooks; the myth of Inanna explores many themes, including the process of descending to darkness to face that which we have not seen or accepted within ourselves, claiming our cut-off parts.

References:

Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer, Diane Wolkstein & Samuel Noah Kramer

Descent to the Goddess: A Way of Initiation for Women, by Sylvia Brinton Perera

“And His poison”; references Phthonos, Greek spirit and embodiment of malicious envy.

“Is trying to our souls”: Reference to Thomas Paine’s American Crisis, December 23, 1776. Excerpt: “THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”