Always a Story

I sat down to work on hats today. My family and I didn’t have any plans after our weekly post-church coffee shop visit so I told my husband and daughters that I’d be down at my workbench if they needed me. I had some organizing to do (I grabbed some beautiful leather from Clear Creek Trading in Sedona when I was there recently) and some general housekeeping in the space. After I organized everything I opened up a few of my feather boxes, turned on some music, and waited… And waited… And waited some more. It may sound strange, but I very rarely know what I’m going to make when I sit down to create. Usually I sort of just start somewhere and figure it out as I go. Sometimes I have a small idea, and it works the whole time. Sometimes I just sit for lots of minutes in a row and think about what I want this all to be. And I don’t make anything at all. For a task oriented person like myself, it has been a rather fascinating experience.

Eventually today I started a design and was really pleased with it as I finished it. I set it aside, and started on a second. I had used some ringed-neck rooster pheasant feathers on the first design and wanted to use similar ones in a different way on the second design. I was using feathers I had been given, but as the design went on, I reached for the boxes that held the cape of the pheasant I harvested myself this past fall. As I opened the box and began looking at the individual feathers, I couldn’t help but start to cry. Each one is completely beautiful on its own right, and they are simply amazing together. And then I remembered the hunt.

I hunted pheasant this past fall for the first time ever in a popular public land area. One I didn’t know and only had been able to research a small amount prior to the season opening. I had purchased a shotgun only a few months earlier. I chatted with a few friends and family members who like to hunt birds, but no one was really mentoring me in hunting pheasant in particular. I saw only one other female while I was out there and the hunt had me so far out of my comfort zone that it took everything in me not to go back to my car and just leave for the day. Just give up completely.

Then I came around a corner of the field and the pheasant was there. I was able to take it with one shot, and as I went to retrieve it, I shed grateful, relieved tears. For the moment. For the bird’s life. For the kindness I felt from the amazing creation around me. For the way that my Creator has designed me, which has always made me feel like I didn’t fit in, but also has never changed. It was a big and wide and open moment, and it cracked a code of sorts inside of me that I didn’t know was locked up. It felt like a holy moment.

As I opened the box this afternoon and admired the feathers and thought of that big holy moment, I again felt gratitude. And I wanted to try to share how much this all means to me somehow. These designs aren’t just something I do to make a few extra dollars. They are the physical representation of the very personal inner growth process I find myself on. They are the byproduct of deep learnings I am gaining right now.

I hope when you wear something you buy from my shop you feel all of this. And the intention I put into each design. And I hope, from the bottom of my heart, that it blesses you.