Transformation, Not Loss: Chanah

Thanks to you:

- My grandchildren will actually have things created by their grandmother. I never found a craft I liked well enough to be patient with it or myself. I wouldn't feel the same about felting without your hacks and business model. Thank you. 

- My 6 year old grandson and I spent many lovely hours needle felting on FaceTime this winter. He loves it and he’s really good at it. I would not know his artistic mind without our felting times. He sees the shapes he needs to make for the wool to become a bird or a sheep, etc. He is great with choosing colors to mix while I hand card. If he doesn’t like the options I present, he sends me to my stash to get the color that is always exactly what the mix needs. We watched your drum carder videos together and he is very excited for the arrival of the drum carder. Thank you.

- I have an added tool for brain management. Emotions come and go but the mental gymnastics that can feed the negative are optional with a good tool kit. I can stab some wool and as the wool transforms, so does my mind. (This would not happen without your hacks; my frustrations with out-of-control-wool would just feed my brain spin.) Thank you.

- I get to learn something new. An injury to a nerve in my back 7.5 years ago blew my life up - I was forced into “retirement” from my work as an ER MD, I was no longer able to do stuff I did before, and a cognitive loss left me seeking ways to learn things that did not require a text. I have always loved learning and this new inability to focus has been difficult. I am extremely grateful and nourished by your ability to teach. You do not focus on a promise of some future ability. You focus on the process now, on the learning, on the beauty of the wool while it is still roving. I feel successful at every stab, even if it happens to be through my finger. Thank you.  

- All of that is great, but this might be the biggest thank you. I have been hating my current aging/downsizing phase of life. This process has had an overhanging sense loss, failure, gloom, and doom. I get rid of the things that have surrounded me for years and then what? Well, I now know what - THEN I get a drum carder and a spinning wheel. :) In 3 weeks, I move to a place less than half the size of my current home. It is a sweet, tiny house. The entire yard is a mature perennial garden. If I want to play with wool, there is little room for anything else. And, for the first time since I began this downsizing process, I feel like I am making a tangible trade rather than suffering an existential loss. I am not experiencing destruction. I am experiencing a transformation to something else, like the wool as it is being stabbed. Aging is inevitable and predictable, but it has struck me like a lightning bolt - abrupt and shocking. Thanks for helping me find tangible and and therefore psychological pleasure and ease while I am transforming my life. 

(By way of update, I moved. I can tell you that I do not miss or even remember much of the stuff I used to have and that of the small square footage in my downsized cottage, one of the 2 small bedrooms is “The Wool Room.” It is the hang out place at my house.)

Many many thanks. You’re awesome. I am so very grateful that I found you. 

Take very good care of yourself. Be well. 

All the best,

Chanah 

I love the creativity inspired by the wool. I never tell the kids what to make. They go to the room, ask for colors, and they create - their ideas, their designs, their creations. No frustrations - they have come to understand that the wool will do whatever you ask with a little coaxing. I think the meditative sound of the needles sets the mood in the room and gives them a sense of inner ease. “I love the sound,” they say.