I've thought about including a blog on my website for a while now. At first, I hesitated because I couldn't imagine who would want to read my ramblings. Just list some pretty stuff and let them look at that, right? And if I'm being honest, I'm still not sure who will want to read my ramblings. Maybe nobody will, and I'm actually really OK with that. So why am I even doing this? Great question. I'm doing this to document my fiber art journey. It's taken me 45 years of life to get to where I am today, most of that life having been spent focused on things other than fiber art. Until recently, my attention was split in so many equally important directions that focusing on fiber art was either not on my radar or impossible to pull off. So how did I get here?
First of all, where is "here"? "Here" is a 45yo Peruvian American woman with a wonderful husband, three remarkable children, and one impossibly adorable Shih Tzu, living in a suburb about 15 minutes away from the suburb I grew up in. Not the most exciting of descriptions, but it's who I am. As a child I was a singer and an actor, and I dabbled in that a bit professionally for a while but decided it wasn't the kind of life I wanted for myself. I went to college in the 90s, and then to graduate school for my PhD in Human Development/Education in the early aughts. I worked in my field of study, specifically as a statistician, for about 5 years before "retiring" to pursue fiber art full time. Academia had just ceased to fuel any sort of fire in my belly, and the special needs of my children required more of my time and attention. Thanks to my husband, we were able to make this work financially. Now I use my degree to develop actual humans, and I sing around the house sometimes, and that suits me just fine.
Why am I saying all of this? I suppose to highlight the fact that I have absolutely no formal training in fiber art whatsoever. I never even really considered that an option as a kid, though I sometimes wish now that I had. I learned how to knit as a child, taught myself how to crochet in my 20s, and have since taught myself every other type of fiber art I can think of and get my hands on. I love it all. I can't get enough of it. Embroidery, weaving, tapestry, felting, macrame, all of it. I'm a bit flighty as a person in general, with a short attention span and the memory of a gnat. This leads to a lot of frenzied obsessions with various aspects and types of fiber art, and makes me a sort of jack of all trades rather than a master of any particular strand. As a former academic, I love research and deep dives into my obsession of the moment. But as I mentioned earlier, memory of a gnat. I am also ridiculously disorganized and can't seem to keep a hard copy journal or notebook to save my life. Thus, enter Blog.
I intend for this blog to serve as a series of notes to myself, and anyone who cares to tune in, about anything and everything fiber art. As mentioned I am entirely self-taught, continually self-teaching, and I hope to bring any potential readers along. There are times when I'm working on something and am so excited to share it with the world, but it's not exactly something that I will be listing on my site as an item for sale. Solution: Blog. Could solution also be IG? Sure. And it has been, and will continue to be. But sometimes an IG post just isn't enough to get all my thoughts across.
I'm looking forward to sharing my journey on here, as I delve deeper into needle felting, wet felting, and tapestry. Those are my current favorites...though my fingers miss crocheting too. Stay tuned, theoretical readers, and thanks for reading!