My piece “Mother’s Milk: Meditation on 7,300 Hours of Nursing My Children" is a piece that combines tapestry and embroidery techniques in a way that I think of as “mixed media” but as it is all Textile Art, I’m not sure that it counts. It is an exploration in marking time and making visible the largely unseen, unpaid, and underappreciated labor that goes into parenting generally and parenting small children in particular. The piece makes use of a milk/wool yarn for both the french knots and as a part of the tapestry element. This yarn fascinated me when I first discovered it as a young mother ..read more

I’m so excited and honored to be able to announce that Birth Stories #007 and Birth Stories #010 were accepted into the 64th Parallel Art Show at the Bear Gallery at Fairbanks Arts Association! Birth Stories #007 also got an Honorable Mention award from the juror. This is an annual fall juried show that open to all Interior Alaskan artists and it so beautiful to know that my pieces are showcased amongst such utter brilliance! This is the one that received an Honorable Mention. We attended the Opening Reception last night and it was a really lovely time. It is always fascinating to see the way ..read more

After the Rain is an exploration of the joy and growth that can come after difficult times. This collection was equal parts a reflection of the emotional experience of entering the wider world again (engaging in work and school and in person friendships) after years of quarantine and isolation with small children, a reaffirmation of my love for the tradition and craft of handweaving, and a self indulgent explosion of rainbows. The warp is a combination of hand dyed and commercially dyed 8/2 cottons, the ground weft is a commercially dyed 16/2 cotton. The pattern wefts are approximately finge ..read more

My handspun round up for 2022: only slightly belated! I did a post like this last year and found it both useful and satisfying to sum up a year this way. So here we are! For this coming year I’ve embraced the joy (and utility) of spreadsheets, and built a spreadsheet to track my handspun as well. I’ve found myself increasingly frustrated by misplacing the 3x5 info cards I’m in the habit of using to provide pertinent details, by needing to jumble through the studio to find my yardage record when determining prices, and more. So, precise record-keeping it is! Donna Nobis Pacem: the 2021 Inglen ..read more

The Birth Collection was begun in 2018, and the final piece finally came off of the loom in 2021. The Birth Story series of mini tapestries debuted this month (January 2023) at my First Friday show and will be in the Imbolc shop update, so I thought that now is the perfect time to share about this collection Birth is a threshold. Giving birth, the body becomes a portal, inviting life from one side of the veil into the other. Baby moves from darkness of womb like a seed in soil into the light of this world. We become the doorway for spirit. There is a special energy that emerges when we stand b ..read more

Plant Witch: Birch Bramble Reed was accepted into the Fairbanks Arts Association juried show “Entanglements” this spring. The First Friday reception is this week, Friday April 1, from 5-7 pm. It will be on exhibit in the Bear Gallery through the end of April and available for purchase through the gallery. Warp: Hand dyed long staple Supima cotton warp Weft: Hand dyed rose viscose weft Inlays: linen/mohair and Pima cotton The ogham inlays in the piece represent birch, bramble, and reed for beginnings/new growth, harvest, and renewal.. The ogham for birch - beithe, symbolizes beginning ..read more

Spinning is the fiber craft that is honestly the most process oriented, meditative craft for me. I can talk some good talk about weaving and sewing and knitting being a meditative process, and it can be! I often get lost in the rhythm or the focus of the handwork, but for me they are very much product-oriented all the same. I knit because I want a sweater, I weave because I want a towel or have a vision of cloth, I sew to make a thing or fix a thing. But spinning! Spinning is a joy and a solace. Its about the whims of texture and color. Its about the rhythm of hands (and sometimes feet). Addin ..read more

The ocean warms, absorbing the heat of our folly. Ice melts, fish die, sea rises, coastlines change.  Sea Change is a four panel tapestry woven as a reflection of the inevitable sea level rise brought about by climate change and the swell of inevitable grief that change will bring in its wake.  This tapestry piece is woven of handspun gradient wool on a wool warp. The weft is spun from superwash domestic wool that fades from browns and greys to blues and greens and into turquoise. It was woven in 2019 and is currently available in the shop ..read more

Birth Story weaves together the hand written birth stories of nearly a dozen women, using their words on paper as weft with textural handspun and handdyed yarns. Tapestry techniques combine with a loom controlled multishaft weave pattern, and are accented by braided plaits and twisted fringe to tell a multi-voiced story of bringing new life into the world - combining experiences of joy and of trauma - that pulls from a rich history of “women’s work” including weaving, midwifery, and parenthood while it looks looks towards a future where birthing bodies are honored and supported in their most ..read more

Some year, I will find myself approaching the night when the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest and I will be pulling scarves and bags off of my loom in colorways dedicated to the three witches in Macbeth or to the legendary medieval flying salves as a celebration of this particularly witchy time of year. Alas, that year is not this year. The studio is deep in the midst of transition and my timing in seasonal projects is as abjectly off kilter as it ever was. However, I do have a seasonal thing or three floating around the shop so if seasonal crafting is your happy place, click through ..read more