In the News

In Cornwall, Workshops Highlight Vintage Skills By Laurel Tuohy, The Litchfield County Times, Friday, March 3, 2006

CORNWALL, CT—A workshop series is being offered that teaches and celebrates old world life skills. Hopefully, attendees will be reminded that they don't depend on stores for survival, that their clothing and food can be made from scratch, by hand from accessible resources.

A workshop on wool gathering is taking place next Saturday, March 11, at the United Church of Christ Parish House. The afternoon of carding, spinning, knitting, and needle making will include lunch and is open to all.

Liz Tapester of Southbury will be demonstrating spinning on a wheel and attendees will get a chance to try it out. There will be a carding area where people can try the art of using combs to make all the wool ffibers go in one direction before they get spun and there will be a class on making wooden knitting needles as well.

"We'll use wooden dowels and sharpen the ends and glue a wooden bead stopper on the other end," said organizer Debra Tyler, who will teach the needle making class, "You have to make them very, very smooth, we'll be using beeswax for that." she said. All the activities are suitable for children and they can bring home their crafts. There will be knitting demonstrations by both Rhonda Jaacks of Salisbury, who will also teach knitting, and Janet Lynn of Salisbury is to demonstrate weaving on a simple loom in which people can try their hand and maybe even start a simple project.

Also on the day's schedule is making felted beads and dying them with Kool Aid with Margaret hopkins of Cornwall. These light weight, large beads "are fun, bright and beutiful" enthused Ms. Tyler. They can be strung and worn on a necklace or braclet.

Lunch is a buffet style pot luck with main courses of lamb stew and vegetarian shepard's pie. A cashmire goat named Pookah will be on the scene for people to pet and play with.

The wool gathering celebration is part of a series of life skills workshops by non-profit group Mothehouse which is run by Ms. Tyler and six others. "The purpose of Motherhouse is to provide time and space for Mothers with the idea of uplifting mothers," said Ms. Tyler of the group that has been an official non-profit since 2003 but has been running a local "Meditation for Mothers" group since 2000.

"My hope is that some day Motherhouse will have a farm to call home that will serve as a retreat center," said Ms. Tyler who also runs Cornwall dairy farm Local Farm. "For the last year, we have become close to thinking we could purchase a farm or work out a lease agreement and thinking about that, we came up with the idea of having this series of workshops that would teach old style life skills." said Ms. Tyler.

This is the second program of a series that will run monthly at least through the end of the year. The first program was on bread baking and was very successful. "Most of these are things that were kind of woman's domain such as baking bread, tending garden, and tending the family cow.

They were all woman's work that was very important and necessary in survival, and now, for alot of these things, we can turn to the stores and buy this stuff. But still knowing how to do them creates a kind of self sufficiency that I'm hoping Motherhouse can help with, she explained.

"Feminism has taken us to this place where women are driving toward equal rights with men in the work place, but we also need to allow or honor what has typically been women's work; the nurturing and home making, the beutiful making and the creating. Just as we work to get women out in the working place, we need to work to get men into the women's world and honor that work, rather than feeling that it's drudgery," she said. It's important to revisit these life skills because "there are a lot of people that feel we aren't always going to have the option of buying at the store, so it's good to know these things.

"I find it very personally satififying to do something for yourself rather than going out and earning money so you can buy things. The bread that I bake, I feel, is far superior than anything I could buy in the store. So many things we buy are mass produced and are really oppressive to the people who work producing them, so every crafts person takes a little energy away from these impersonal beings and puts a little more energy into a better world," she said of the ideas behind the series and Motherhouse.

The UCC is at 8 Bolton Hill Road. The event is from noon until 3 p.m.

The per family cost is $35 and it is suggested to bring a pot luck dish for sharing. Please register by contactin Ms. Tyler at 860-672-0229.