“Are you looking for a new hobby?” the Sponsored Post in Instagram asked. The picture showed a group of smiling 30-something blond women. They were gathered around a table filled with crafting supplies, ready to dig in.

The thing about saying to someone “I’ll pray for you,” is you’d better do it right away, lest you get busy and forget. Also, when the tag line for the worship items you make is “Prayerfully Handwoven,” you’d better do that too.

The calendar tells me that it’s Ordinary Time. The green of my garden glimpsed through the blinds of my studio window, and my weaving confirm this. But the time does not feel ordinary…

The view from my loom is my small back yard - my cloister garden, I call it…

I’ve been walking in the wilderness the last couple of weeks. Like the ancient Israelites, my mood has been alternatively despairing, angry, resolute, back to despairing. My nights have been sleepless and more than a few tears have been shed…

I sat down to start weaving on the tallit the other night - finally! What is the appropriate prayer, I wondered, for starting to weave? Treadle, the shed raises …

Trigger warning: This story deals with sexual assault.

It was quite a week. First a few, then a flood, on our social media feeds. #metoo #WhyIdidntreport. Each story unique, and also sickeningly familiar…

Cleaning rituals are found all over the world. Although many are tied to religious beliefs - Chinese New Year, Persian New Year, Lent, Passover, Imbolc, Diwali - the ubiquity of the rituals suggests a physical, as well as a spiritual, value…

I’m excited to be making tallitot (prayer shawls) for these two lovely ladies for their upcoming B’nai Mitzvah celebration. It’s always fun to work with clients to design something that incorporates their ideas with my design aesthetic.

A couple of weeks ago I drove up out of Santa Paula into Ojai for the first time since the Thomas Fire…

My latest project is a set of wedding shawls. To set the mood, I put on some appropriate music to weave by - Handel’s “Water Music,” including my wedding march of choice. But as I weave, I can’t help but think …

There’s a lot of pushback right now about the phrase “thoughts and prayers.” I get it. Thoughts and prayers are not a substitute for action, but they are a prelude to it. They are a chance to process - to cry, to talk, to listen. They are a time to build insight and understanding.

“How long did it take you to make this?”

This is a question dreaded by most artists and craftsmen. Because this isn’t really the question that is being asked. Frequently, what the questioner really wants to know is …

It seemed odd to be weaving vestments on this day when all of the altars are stripped bare.  Tomorrow they will be ablaze with white, but today, surrounded by vigilants in silent prayer, the altars - wood for the cross or stone for the tomb - are not softened with any fabric.  

The most beautiful rainbows I ever saw were at Bryce Canyon National Park. My family was camping during the summer monsoon season. Most days the afternoon thunder showers would provide welcome relief from the heat of the day. But this day the rain started early and kept on steadily.

This is one of my favorite things in the world - a freshly dressed loom, ready for weaving to start.

This is a world full of possibilities - innumerable possibilities (though not, as my mathematician husband reminds me, not ‘nearly infinite’). A tabula rasa.

I woke up this morning to the sound of rain on the roof. This has always been a magical sound, and after years of drought, a most welcome one. Eventually the sound ebbed. I got up to boil water for a cup of tea.

I just cut a project off the loom - a wool scarf for my husband Bruce. I’m done weaving - but I’m not finished!

So I get this magazine called Artful Blogging. It’s eye candy, printed on high quality paper, with profiles of blogs and bloggers, and lots of beautiful pictures. I enjoy reading it, and I’ve gotten a lot of good ideas and advice from it.