wool flower patches

a naturally colorful project for busy hands

first, a note on these letters: with the dawn of spring and the house-cleaning and the fresh start of it all, I am giving Warmly a little refresh, too. I am so grateful for the support I receive for this substack, and I want to pour more energy and time into that. Instead of once or twice a month, I am going to come to this space every week, rotating through four themes so there’s an update for each, each month. One week will be a letter from Vermont with the comings and goings of life at home and on our scrappy homestead called Noisy Village (see the first post from two weeks ago), a week for recipes called Common Kitchen (last week’s post), a week for craft, and a week for updates from my studio. This week is for craft, and I’m calling this series Busy Hands. A simple title, but it came to mind as I was reading a book about Grandma Moses which included a piece she wrote called “Let Home be Made Happy,” which described the importance of keeping one’s hands busy making their home beautiful just as nature herself never stops making beautiful plants, flowers, and trees. Busy Hands will offer a monthly project to make with your hands – from sewing and mending to book arts and home herbalism.

Here's an excerpt from Grandma Moses:

“Industry is a homely virtue yet worthy of all praise, even nature herself reads us a lecture upon it. Let us go for a moment from the homes of men to the quiet forest. Here we shall find no discord or tumult of worldly traffic. It is silent but look around and see what has been done by the busy hand of nature. Will you look at nature and see her with industrious fingers weaving flowers and plants and grasses and trees and shrubs to ornament every part of the earth and will you go home no wiser for this hint? Will you go home to that dear spot upon which the heart should shine as the sun in spring-time shines upon the flowers…and will you not adorn it by your industry as nature adorns the fields and the forest?”

Every Wednesday I go to school. Our family has the good fortune of being a part of a small, sweet school community and volunteering to lead activities, help with snack time, and read with the older elementary students on Wednesday is one of my favorite parts of the week. On Tuesday I prepare a craft and pack my blue basket with all the supplies, and the next morning at Activity Time I offer my project to whichever students want to make walnut shell and pussy willow bud bird nests, Japanese notan-inspired papercuts, cardboard houses or birds or paper tube flowers, or wool felt flower patches. I keep them seasonal and try to vary the media and materials from week to week (though sewing and papercrafts are certainly my most heavily-offered – I am what I am!) In May I look forward to frog skin texture paintings and flower pressing and perhaps the start of a collaborative quilt project.