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Fiber Art Blog

New Moon - June 2017

I’ve been thinking about blogging for quite some time now. Life, a broken hand, totaling my truck on black ice (walking away unscathed), and the day job got in the way. Sometimes I get in my own way.  So, after a series of set-backs - life being crazy busy, completing a million dollar interpretive exhibit, and a job promotion that involved moving to the other end of the state - I forge onward a begin anew. 

Reflecting back to 2013, upon returning home after a lovely time in Colorado camping at Great Sand Dunes National Monument, enjoying an evening with total strangers at a hostel in Salida, attending a RUSH concert in Denver, and several days at the Stanley Hotel and Rocky Mountain National Park, I returned with new inspiration – and then I fell and broke my hand. Kodi, my husky dog, was a participant in that fiasco. A trip to the emergency room revealed that I broke the fifth metacarpal on the right hand, my dominant hand – the one I sew and write with – in two places. After surgery to insert 4 pins, months of healing and many tenacious hours of physical therapy, it became functional again. The little finger now has a mind of its own.

Typing and other skills are not as accurate as they were before. Yet, the fact my right hand functions as well as it does is a tribute to a wonderful physical therapist and my own stubborn will to learn how to write, draw, and sew again. The tedium of fine handwork was a bit frustrating at first, but I persisted. The trick is getting the brain, hand, and fingers working in sync again. The brain still thought the hand and fingers could do things as well as they did previously. The hand and fingers do not always respond as skillfully as the brain commands. I still drop things.

Now it is time to pick things up again, specifically the creative process in whatever form it manifests: sewing, drawing, doodling, photography, sculpting, cooking, painting, and writing. I've longed to write again so this is the beginning. I hope you will enjoy this and future blogs. Blog topics may vary, but rest assured they will speak to the creative process,

methods and techniques as they relate to fiber and textiles art, countless sources of creative inspiration, and interpreting the world around us through creative self-expression.

Putting quill to paper and threaded needle to fabric inspired the name for this blog - Needle and Quill. Through the modern day quill of technology I will share my inspiration and passion for creative self-expression and symbolic meaning making with needle and strands of flowing fibers - fibers that stitched human life together for thousands of years. Woven through time, fiber reveals our life is in stitches.