Threads & Thresholds
When I went on maternity leave in spring 2024, I expected to take a few months off and then tiptoe back into textile work as I felt able. Then I had an emergency c-section and a difficult first few months of motherhood, so I pushed back my return to work. Then my father passed away after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease, and I became the executor of his estate on top of being the primary caregiver and power of attorney for my mother. So my maternity leave morphed into bereavement leave.
And here we are in the fall of 2025, I’m finally feeling ready to do that tiptoeing back into textiles, but I’m not the same person I was when I stepped away. These past two years have torn through my life, pushing me through the thresholds of birth and death, reshaping who I am, what I value, and the kind of life I want to build going forward. As I find myself in an intense caregiving season of my life, the administrative burden of running a small business seems completely untenable, and I find myself longing to reclaim crafting as a hobby and creative outlet. During this wave of life changes, my family’s finances have also shifted, and it now makes much more sense for me to focus my energy on full time child rearing and managing our home economy rather than striving for profit as an entrepreneur.
At the same time, I am thriving in my new role as a stay-at-home mum. It’s all consuming and exhausting, and I’m having the time of my life indulging in the domestic skills of cooking, baking, preserving, pickling, and mending alongside all the parenting. I’m dreaming of having a second baby, getting backyard chickens, and becoming a full-on urban homesteader. Spinning, dyeing, knitting, and weaving certainly fit into this new dream. But running a yarn brand and travelling to fibre markets? Maybe not so much?
I’m imagining the future of my textile practice to include pattern design, dye experiments, collaborative art projects, writing, and the occasional speaking engagement, and I hope to keep sharing my fibre journey here on this blog and through my email newsletter. As I wander down this new path, picking up the old threads of my craft and figuring out what comes next, I hope you’ll follow along.