Wool is one of the oldest materials humans have ever worked with. Long before metal, long before written language, long before borders existed, people gathered wool, washed it, carded it, spun it, and shaped it into warmth, protection, and story.

My ancestors, Norse, Viking, Northern European, lived in landscapes shaped by wind, ice, and fire. Wool was their constant companion. It clothed them, armored them, sheltered them, and carried their myths across generations.

When I work with wool today, I feel that lineage rise up through my hands.

This is not a modern craft for me.
It is an inherited memory.
A return.
A remembering.

I begin with raw wool from local Indiana farms, but the process itself is ancient. I wash it, pick it, and dye it by hand. I lay it out layer by layer, using the same fundamental techniques practiced by women and artisans centuries ago in Northern Europe. When I wet-felt, the rhythm is unchanged: water, heat, pressure, intention. The fibers bind to one another the way old stories once bound families, communities, and clans together.

Wool is alive in a way few materials are.
It remembers.
It holds shape.
It keeps secrets.

In 2022, my life fractured in ways I could not have prepared for. My mother became suddenly and gravely ill with pancreatic cancer, a brutal, aggressive disease that moved faster than our ability to understand or respond. While she suffered deeply, my son was killed by fentanyl poisoning. The losses did not arrive one at a time; they collided.

Grief came from every direction at once, leaving no space to brace, no time to recover between blows.

Afterward, I lived in a state of profound grief and PTSD that altered how I moved through the world. My nervous system stayed on high alert. My sense of safety dissolved. The future felt both unbearable and unreachable.

I did not turn to art for beauty or productivity.

I turned to it to survive.

Working with wool became a way to stay grounded when my thoughts spiraled and my body held more than it could release. The physicality of the process, washing, pulling, pressing, and shaping, brought me back into my hands when my mind was overwhelmed. Wool asked me to slow down, to pay attention, to be present. It required repetition, pressure, and patience. It required care.

When I sculpt a hat, an ornament, or a figure, I feel myself participating in a long thread of human magic. The human connection to wool predates religion, predates kingdoms, and predates the idea that art should be separate from daily life. Many ancient cultures understood that materials carried spirit, that handmade objects held power, and that crafting itself was a form of devotion.

I feel that truth every day in my studio.

The wool warms beneath my palms the same way it warmed the hands of the women who came before me.
The fibers twist and tighten, as if responding to something older than language.
Each piece becomes a vessel for memory, grief, strength, protection, and transformation.

As I worked, I began to write. The writing and the making fed one another. Wool gave my grief somewhere to go when words failed; words gave meaning to what my hands were doing when my body needed to release what it was holding. Together, art and writing became a path toward healing. Not a destination, but a direction.

This is a journey I am still on.

My art began in grief, but it continues in devotion to my mother, to my son, to the ancestors who came before me, and to the version of myself who learned to keep going when everything felt broken. Through felting, sculpting, dyeing, and stitching, I connect to a wisdom older than myself.

I create hats that feel like armor, sculptures that feel like guardians, and ornaments that feel like charms carried across centuries.

Every piece on my website is built with the same elemental ingredients humans have always used:
fiber, water, heat, story, and time.

Wool is not just my material.
It is my lineage.
It is the thread that ties me to ancient hands, ancient knowing, and the long, unbroken history of human resilience.

And when you wear or hold one of my pieces, you are touching that history too.