Healing Handcrafting

Category Archives: Handcrafting


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Showing Up With Love and Presence, and Fiber

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Dear Readers,

Have I let too much time go by in between posts? My longing to write about the moments, the textures, the projects and the beauty around me has been dulled, stolen really, by my broken heart, fear and unyielding anger at what is this new administration in the county in which I live, the United States. I am finding it hard to write about lovely things that I get to enjoy when executive orders put out by the president-I-cannot-name and his lackeys are, in my estimation, severely screwing shit up. People, beautiful, innocent, loving people are being traumatized and retraumatized by having plans and dreams wrestled from their hands, literally, in airports. People, lovely, hardworking, courageous, resilient and prayerful people are trapped now, either within US borders or outside of them, regardless of having the right paperwork in many cases. We have here a president who is saying that all is fine, all is great, things are working well in airports… have you seen the images of people grasping at one another after being detained for many hours because of the country they flew in from? Have you seen images of the protests all over the country? All over the world? Sorry. Things are not fine. Things are not great.

The Dakota Access Pipeline…

The Wall between the US border and Mexico…

Healthcare…

Here’s what is bringing me hope, making the blood move in my veins with energy, combatting my desire to go to sleep for four years (or two~ here’s to the mid-term elections people, let’s make some shit happen): the protesters all over the world showing the powers that be that actually, not everyone shares the same ideas about huge groups of people; an overwhelming amount of people are aligned with world citizenship and have compassion and love flowing from their core; lawyers are freaking BRINGING IT to serve people, pro-bono, to help them deal with the cluster that is this Executive Order on Immigration. You guys, and the ACLU, you are amazing.

I’m just a regular person trying to keep up, trying to make sure that I’m reading accurate news and taking right action. I’m seeing in my corner of the world that all signs point to a major crossroads in this country. We’ve been tumbling in this direction for a long time. The highways, roads, rivers and tributaries leading towards the Moment of Choice, where we determine how we view ourselves in relation to the world have been covered over , polluted and at times unclear. Not any more. Not for anyone. Those who have always been fighting the fight for equality, justice and freedom have not succumbed to complacency or obtuseness the way many of us have, as I have. Not any more.

I am not a political writer. This place that I have secured to write about the healing effects of fiber art, handcraft and creativity, it will remain that and I love that, but occasionally I may have to refer to what’s going on here and around the world from my little vantage point. All I do is housed in the reality we all share, and compartmentalization has never worked very well for me.

Some Recent Things:

Ice:

My Sweet Littlest Harvesting Icicles Like It’s Her Job:

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Our Resident Owl:

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Teaching Weaving to Children Is One of My Greatest Joys:

Paper Making Attempt:

I read a cool thing the other day, maybe a friend’s Facebook post? I don’t remember, but the gist of it was that in order to handle all that our world, our spirit, our heart asks of us, we must also attend to our places of love and hope, health and strength. I wish for all of us to reside in these places, and meet with what comes our way from a place of integrity, wisdom and power. The other day, I showed a group of 6- and 7-year olds images of people weaving from all over the world. All different colors of skin, all different kinds of attire, all different kind of settings. I told them them that when weaving, we are engaging in a practice that humans have been participating for at least 10, ooo, but more likely closer to 25, 000 years. We are all bound by a need for clothing, housing, containers, and beauty. These fibers, they connect us to each other and to our ancient ancestors. It felt good to talk about that on Friday, having no idea what was about to transpire.

I’ll keep talking to kids about things like that, for as long as they’ll listen.

Be well,

Bradie


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I Love These Two

Recently, my children and I hit a sweet, melodic flow. It’s not a coincidence that this occurred organically after I made some concrete decisions to simplify my life a bit, pare down the number of things I consider top priorities (how many top priorities can we possibly have?!), and just let myself live a little, without letting the constant internal judge that resides in my psyche like a doomsday specter screw up the sweet life I have. 

Afternoons after school, I worked on a gift for my cousin and her soon to be born Bebe, and my kids finished these wildly awesome dolls that they have played with every day since. I adore them. 


I’m learning, people. 

On the bus heading to my cousin and her full with baby belly, I just read a cool quote I thought I’d share, too. 

From, Will-Developed Intelligence: Handwork & Practical Arts in the Waldorf School, by David Mitchell and Patricia Livingston, it speaks to why making things from start to finish is so deeply satisfying and important for human beings. I’m working on curriculum ideas for my Farm to Frame series and find this quote a beautiful buttress to my efforts. I’m learning so much from this book. I did not go to a Waldorf school, nor do my children. It’s wonderful finding language, research and guideposts for teaching according to developmental stages. A true gem. 

I hope you have a lovely weekend, wherever you are in the world. 


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Gratitude, Grief, Love and Yarn: Holding it All

It’s been almost a month since my last post. I have missed writing here and allowing for myself the space to reflect on and share thoughts about handwork, process and life. I’ve not handled political news and world news well and needed to take some serious steps back so that I could regain some sort of balance and be the kind of mother, wife, daughter, sister and friend I want to be. As I write that, I realize that the one area I’ve neglected significantly is how I want to be in relationship with myself. It’s a well-worn complaint really, one that I’m kind of tired of, but nevertheless, tending to my relationship with myself is always, always the first priority I have to take a hit when the rumblings of pressure, grief, work and responsibility register on the Richter Scale of the nervous system. I can feel the effects now, but they are more of a tugging, a call to get back to having yarn move through my fingers as it becomes part of an image made real, practicing hand-stitching so that I might learn something new and make textured and calming designs, an urge to walk through the outside, amidst people and alone.

I do have to say, another deep and abiding feeling I have as this year wraps up and a new one is about to begin, is gratitude. Immense gratitude. I am learning how to have this feeling while allowing for grief at the same time for the immeasurable suffering that is experienced by people all over the world. It’s requiring a lot of stretching and expanding and allowing for reality. All of it. Not just the little slivers that I experience in my life with my loves.

And, there’s the word… Love. It is all I come back to and all I strive towards.

“Love is absolutely vital for a human life. For love alone can awaken what is divine within you. In love, you grow and come home to your self. When you learn to love and to let your self be loved, you come home to the hearth of your own spirit. You are warm and sheltered. You are completely at one in the house of your own longing and and belonging.” Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom by John O’Donohue

There are so many ways to share love and cultivate it in a life. This will be a primary focus of mine in the coming year, years, life…

~And, here’s a bit of a view of the last month~

Some things I made for gifts and for a little vendor pop-up in our town…

owl with monocle
grumpy owl in nest
woman
little nest with little person
nature appetizer plate
owl with feathers
a dream catcher in progress for a friend’s daughter

And a little bit of our outside life!

who are you?
pure delight!
turkeys making their way into our woods
my loves

 

A sweater project I’m taking on!

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My work space (a small part of it!)…

I’ve dug into working on genealogy and wow is it FUN!

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Some projects that I’ve been doing with kids at our local school. Such fun! The circular weaving bird’s nest project came from this wonderful crafter. Check her out!

kids’ weaving progects
bird’s nest
circular weaving

 

I hope the last few days of 2016, quite an ass-kicker of a year, prove to be gentle, filled with love and all that is precious to you.

 


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Yarn is Medicine

Is the planet spinning faster than usual? Quick upticks here and there? Here’s a bit of life lately…

First of all, there’s more evidence that shows that my yarn obsession is good for me! Read this great article! And, jam making is most definitely in my future. 

Below is a piece I made that started out as a woven boat, but as I had to keep tinkering with a too-loose warp I began thinking about those fleeing war-torn Syria on boats too small, too packed and too weak. It became a meditation for me and I decided to donate the money from the sale of this boat to the Refugee Resettlement Program in Vermont. It will be for sale at an upcoming Holiday Pop-Up. 

Here’s my littlest love feeling the Christmas spirit. 

My mom always put dolls and fairies and magic in our Christmas trees. I hope I can do it even a fraction as well. 

Beautiful tree lights our mornings and evenings. 

My spinning wheel has been busy, busy! I have much more yarn to make but it’s been lovely! 

A basket of color from my store bought stash. I think a wildly outrageous sweater is in there somewhere, waiting to be born. 

I’m not sure what to say except that every year these things make me smile. 

Him, too…

The sun’s departure time most assuredly has a bit to do with my sense of speediness. I have to alter my idea that things need to be done by dark, or be fine with not as much getting done. The latter is hard for me…


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Recovering, Crafting & Learning Post-Election

Hello to you. It’s been a while. Given that my blog is about the healing benefits of handcrafting with a little bit of elbow room to talk about other things, I made a choice not to write every day about how I’m metabolizing the election outcome in this here United States of America. But to be frank, it’s all I’ve been thinking about. My Slow-Stitch journey has taken a pause and will resume soon (I apologize to any who might be following that and stitching along). I really found it hard for a bit to do anything that was remotely and technically enjoyable because I could not emerge from my own dismay. Things that have helped: attending a peace rally, going to a lecture addressing white privilege and US history, talking with people about their ideas and reactions, many similar, many not, and making a clear decision to be vigilant, to listen and do my best to be an active participant in my community. Joining fellow knitters and crocheters in our local group that contributes items to Knitting4Peace has also proven yet again to be a refuge and a joy~ making things with people for people all over the world is soul medicine. And, walking around outside.

I received an invitation a few days ago to participate in a local Holiday Pop-Up for area vendors and decided to do it. This is also taking some attention away from my Slow Stitch work, but it’s a good and important process for me, to get back involved with making things that I love with wool and yarn. It’s allowing me some room to let myself have fun and just enjoy being random, with a goal in mind, which I need sometimes. I’ve been spinning yarn, weaving and crocheting here and there as I can. My kitchen table is covered with my ongoing projects, my kids are excited to felt rocks and make things too, and it’s just plain feeling good.

Super Moon
Bird’s Nest
I think this is coyote scat, but not sure!

Supermoon, bird’s nest and what I think to be coyote scat.

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Can I hide in there, too?

Some ongoing projects and yarny explorations.

Have a sweet week. I hope it includes doing what brings you calm and peace.


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I Am Sickened

Last night, I watched in shocked horror along with my countrywomen and countrymen, as Donald Trump was elected President of the United States of America. Truly, I did not think this would come to pass. I believed polls indicating a landslide victory for Hillary Clinton. Last night, I watched the country decide to vote in a man who bragged about sexually assaulting women, who has said violent and racist things about Muslims, African Americans, Mexicans, refugees… I watched a man be voted into our highest office, who laughed as people were bullied and intimidated, and in some cases humiliated and assaulted at his rallies. I held my husband’s hand and knew as the numbers came in that I would have to tell my children in the morning that Trump won. Not Hillary. I will not describe right now how that early morning conversation went. It was so personal, so tender. My daughter counted how old she’ll be next time a woman might have a shot at the presidency. I prayed quietly that some of my biggest fears would not come to pass in the coming four years.

Ultimately, I had to put on my grown-up self, and I had to explain to my children that half the country saw things differently than me and that we must be clear and specific when we criticize or otherwise remark on Trump’s inevitable presidency. No blanket statements. No simple rhetoric. I told my children, “we are not Trump.” And I mean it. We are not Trump. We will not reduce our complaints and criticisms to generalities, to lazy incomplete thoughts, sentences or stereotypes. We will do our best to understand the mindset that led to this terrible outcome. In my mind, it is terrible. It is a betrayal of epic proportions and I see no way through the tunnel of pain I exist in now other than to look with eyes wide open at the truth of what is.

We will name, in specific language, what we see in our culture, in our government and in ourselves. We will name and shed light on the dark spots in our psyches, the spots where fear lives, where judgment and racism live, where jealousy and indifference live. We will name and shed light on those parts of ourselves that move towards violence, repression, suppression and purposeful ignorance so that we don’t have to evolve, preventing change and growth. These are my prayers now. That I can live up to these ideals and model them for my children. My prayers are now pleas with my higher self and the higher self of our country, that we will not, ever, tolerate, exonerate, minimize or condone the cruel, degrading rhetoric that has spewed from our future president’s mouth. My prayers now implore my higher self to not succumb to despair, hopelessness and untethered anger.

Mr. Trump, you have a big job ahead of you, and I pray that you, too, take vows that reflect a deep respect for this world and for all the people in it, most of whom are not like you.


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Slow Stitch Stitch Along~ Weeks 7 and 8

Well folks, I’m still working through my sorbello stitch square! Taking me some time this go-around because of an absolutely jam-packed last couple of weeks that included work, my son’s birthday celebration, two major house leaks and Halloween, not to mention everything else that is involved in living a full life! Sorbello stitch also gave me some pause. I think I’ve got the hang of it, but wow, I can’t seem to keep a straight line or keep the stitches looking the same each time! Sometimes I get it and then other times what should look like a substantial, compact knot looks like a weird thick thread line. My wobbly, inconsistent rows started to remind me of old buildings with poor construction in heavy winds, so that is now what I’m making, moving ever more slowly towards more consistency and hopefully more vertical-ness! Ha. Truly, this square will capture an image of me trudging through a learning curve.

Start out wobbly.

Build on wobbly.

Start afresh and hope for stability.

Over and Over.

Here you see how far I’ve gotten so far in my sorbello stitch square. I’ll for sure post updates as I move through completion. I expect to have a little city block by the end with maybe (hopefully) at least a few straight buildings by the end!

For those who are following this Slow Stitch Stitch-Along and are moving along with us, I will share my idea for Weeks 7 and 8, and really moving right through the end of the month. I think it would be lovely to go back to stitches that called to us or inspired other ideas using different fabrics and threads. I can see combining stitches and making designs and pictures, or rhythmic patterns. I can see playing and assembling our squares in either fabric books or in some kind of display that invites touch, reflection and curiosity. I can also see further exploration into stitches we might not have tried. If I decide to do that, I’ll post the ones I’m attempting. I don’t want to rush through stitching and playing to get on to the next thing. It seems like there are so many ways we can integrate stitching into the handcrafts we already do. I can imagine playing around with that in mind as we approach the process of moving on.

December and January will be a smallish (or biggish, depending on time) Kantha project that is discussed in Part Three of Slow Stitch: Mindful and contemplative textile art, by Claire Wellesley-Smith. More to come on that!

Until then, happy stitching and happy autumn. Don’t forget to look for the supermoon on November 14!


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Slow Stitch Stitch-Along Weeks 5 and 6

“Any regular, repetitive action primes the well. Writers have heard many woeful tales of the Bronte sisters and poor Jane Austen, forced to hide their stories under their needle-work. A little experiment with some mending can cast a whole new light on these activities. Needlework, by definition regular and repetitive, both soothes and stimulates the artist within. Whole plots can be stitched up while we sew. As artists, we can very literally reap what we sew.” Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way

For Week 4, we worked on the fly stitch. I loved this stitch. It was fun, satisfying, took a little bit to get the hang of, and then lent itself generously to experimentation and shaping. I thought I’d have time to make two squares, but alas, one was all I could complete. I’m working on not urgently finishing something that is supposed to be a practice in steady and slow. Urgency and too-busy are not qualities in life I value any longer. I think they are over-rated tendencies that make people sick. They distract focus from what is right in front of us. There are only so many hours in a day and I’m coming to accept ever more that really, there is a finite amount of time in which I will exist. All of the many things I want to do, wish I had of done, hope to do in the future have to be reconciled with the reality of what is.

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I kind of meant to do a square of fly stitch in rows, but then I decided that actually, the stitches were reminding me of wheatgrass and of weeping willow branches without their leaves. I decided to allow myself to make what I saw in my mind’s eye. It was a lovely experience.

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So, we are moving along in our Slow-Stitch. I am going to add two stitches to our queue and give myself two weeks to play around with them. Halloween and my son’s birthday make this upcoming week more exciting and full than usual, so I plan on steadily and quietly moving through stitches as I can.

It’s not too late to join if you’d like!

Here are the two new stitches: sorbello and seed. Practice using small squares of fabric, maybe one on its own and one in layers. Use thread that calls to you and let yourself enjoy the process without the sense of rushing or pressure urging your hands.

If you’re wondering what this is all about, here’s the introduction to this Stitch Along, that was entirely inspired by the book Slow Stitch: Mindful and contemplative textile art, by Claire Wellesley-Smith.


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Slow Stitch Stitch-Along, Week 4

I like having this Stitch-Along right now. It’s keeping me connected to what I really, really want to be doing but am having the hardest time devoting time to. It’s a constant struggle for me these days, to pick up what I love (other than my children). I plan on writing more about this in the coming week, but I feel rather sure that this election cycle here in the United States is one culprit in a cauldron of stressors.

I found time today, though. Time to sit and complete my bookmark. I turned the design into a house with a chimney and gave it a thatched roof. When my daughter saw it, she decided she wanted to write a story about sewing bookmarks. I hope she does! I mounted my other experimental piece on an antique handkerchief and I thought about time and the apparent coming of a new age of politics in this country.

I thought about ways I might be more gentle in my approach to life, and more disciplined so that I might do at least some of things I long to do, but hadn’t written in to some original plan of adulthood. I thought about adjusting, letting go of some things and turning towards those things that call to me, including service to this aching world.

The coming 4th week of the Slow Stitch Stitch-Along will include learning a new one (for me): the fly stitch.

One square or two. Fly stitch. Different patterns, directions, colors, fabrics. We’ll see. My hope is to do one square on plain linen, and one piece including a few fabrics using both running stitch and fly stitch. We’ll see how it goes.

Again, for those who might want to join, we are using the book Slow Stitch: Mindful and contemplative textile art, by Claire Wellesley-Smith as our guide. I am a brand new stitcher and am finding my groove. Anyone is welcome to join us, with any skill level.

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Slow Stitch Stitch-Along, Week 3

My partner in stitching and I agreed to extend the running stitch squares for another week. The last several days have included busy spots that I could only describe as Tetris-like. When the days actually worked out, I marveled at my ability to pull it all off. But sadly, I didn’t get as much stitching in as I wanted and so suggested extending it by a bit. 

I was able to experiment, practice, and imagine though. 


I was able to get into a very sweet flow and pay attention to my thoughts. I’m slowly learning what I like the looks of and how to make things line up. This is a wonderful process for me.