I’ve been AWOL for quite a while. Pandemic exhaustion, health issues (happily, now largely resolved), political fatigue, life… all have affected my creativity, my muse, my mojo. I’m trying to get back in the saddle. But I haven’t stopped making things.

In the summer of 2022, a rare medicine reaction put me out of commission for months. It finally subsided, but left me with arthritis in my hands, making it difficult to do the kinds of fiber work I had done before. I don’t make temari any more. After several months, I was able to begin knitting again, though I now stick mostly to garter stitch and patterns that don’t require much stitch manipulation. I have been making a lot of shawls and wraps, and find it very soothing. But I no longer have the ability—or the desire—to do production work. I have withdrawn from several galleries, stopped doing shows, and closed my Etsy and web shops. Whatever making I do now, I do for me, for my own satisfaction, rather than for sale.

Before all this happened, I had begun experimenting with needlefelting. And I discovered later that my now permanently achy hands could nevertheless wield the felting tool without difficulty. And so I have been happily exploring this new technique.

I’ve also used needlefelting for my temperature project. Inspired by the Tempestry Project, in 2023 I began a daily practice of needlefelting the day’s high and low temperatures for Burlington, Vermont. I use a palette of KnitPicks yarns first developed by the Tempestry Project, with each color representing a 5-degree temperature span. I have continued this practice in 2024 and plan on continuing indefinitely.