January Joys

A Podcast. An Excerpt. The Last Rabbit.

Dear friend and fellow maker,

As January draws to a close, I’m wondering where it went, yet also grateful for its gifts. Perhaps it is the gift of snow and ice slowing down my daily rhythm. Or maybe it is nearing the finish lines of two long-term projects, only achieved by small and consistent efforts over a long period of time. One of these is the weaving of twelve rabbits. The other is writing and illustrating a book. Daily drawings celebrate home and time spent with family.¹ And the cherry-on-top was a podcast, that I had been interviewed for in November, coming out this month. I hereby dub January “delightful”!

I’ll start by sharing the podcast, in hopes that if you too are snowed in, you might have a listen as Becky Gehrisch, whose podcast is The Origins of Creativity, interviews me asking some really lovely questions. We get into how tapestry weaving came to be in my life, its therapeutic power alongside spinning and drawing, how teaching has been a gift, the ways fiber arts ties us to history and other cultures, and how slow creative work teaches one to be in the moment. Becky and her husband have a heart for encouraging creative people of all kinds and I do hope you will enjoy all the other interviews — such fascinating artists and helpful points to glean from them. The link to listen to my interview is here.

We have now had a week of “snow” days. Well, what came through our area almost a week ago was more ice and freezing rain than snow, but it has lingered due to very cold temperatures and has caused schools to shut down. We are expecting more “weather” this weekend, so we might have even more snow days. The up-side of this has been more time to work on my book The Spinning House: Stories to Light the Way. I am closing in on the fine tuning of designing the book in Affinity Publisher and I’m encouraged that I might actually be able to meet my deadline for the book to be out sometime in March; perhaps early March instead of late. It has been a very loooong timeline from start to finish.

A Year of Rabbits - August, September, October, November

I have also been able to weave my tapestry rabbits² this month in a fairly consistent manner. The last time I posted about the Rabbit Tapestries here on Substack, I think I had completed August. Now September, October, November and December are done! Well, at the time I’m sending this out to you, I only have the embroidered details left to do on December’s holly-toting bunny. I am truly sad to see this series end! But I’ve got plans for what is next so please stay tuned to see!

I’m not certain what I’d like to do with these twelve bunnies. One friend recommended that I write a children’s book to go along with them. They would indeed make for unique “illustrations”. Another friend through that a calendar with each bunny representing their month. I love this idea and may actually do this for a 2027 calendar! I’ve also thought of selling them off one by one. But for now, I have a heap of finishing work to weave the warp ends in place and have them ready for framing. Two of the twelve have already been framed, so only ten more to go! Ha! 😬

I thought I’d leave you with a little snippet from my upcoming book. There are three stories within the overall storyline. One of these stories is about a great-great-grandmother mouse named Eleanor whose work is to spin fiber for sale at market. Her spinning wheel is a curious thing. Here’s a description of her wheel —

“Eleanor always knew there was something unusual about her spinning wheel. She noticed it would continue to spin during the day whenever she set her hands to another task in the room. She often needed to write her words down in a little book. For as she sat spinning, her thoughts would also spin until she felt she might burst if she didn’t pen them down. There, with paper and pen instead of Fool in Eleanor’s lap, the little wheel continued to whirr, spinning up the same brilliant thread even as Eleanor wrote. On other occasions, when the colors she saw in the iridescent thread would sparkle and dance, she just had to record their beauty in her sketchbook. And as she painted, the little wheel kept on spinning as if to say, “thank you!” Even when she picked up some of the loose ends of spun Fool to knit a pair of mittens for a friend, the wheel continued making thread from the Fool in her daily cache in the wall.”

I have a feeling all spinners would love to have a wheel that continued to spin no matter what we were doing, no matter the interruptions to our day, or the responsibilities we have, or other creative things we enjoy.

The “Fool” mentioned in this excerpt is a fiber much like wool in many ways. The only difference is that Fool (pronounced the same way as Wool) sparkles or shimmers in a unique way that iss hard to describe. Some might say it iss iridescent, others that it glows. In some way the Fool fiber seems to contain and emanate Light. It is this Light that the mice in the Spinning House spin. I hope you will want to read more about this enchanting world! 🐭

(Recently spun “Frost Series”. Blended them all with a generous amount of sparkle! I used the pale ice blue for the background yarn in the December Rabbit tapestry. 🥰)

Well friend, I’m off now to do the final embroidered bits on the December Rabbit. Wish me luck! I hope wherever you are in this big world of ours, that the work of your hands is whirring and twirling into good things!

Spin On!

Jennifer

1. A highlight of Christmas was seeing our adorable grandgirls wearing their matching outfits that my husband and I had given to them, plus the hats I knitted for each of them from Susan B. Anderson patterns. They play together so well and give each other hugs — this Nonni’s heart just melts!

2. To read about the other woven rabbits, check here! 🐰😍