The Women's Circle
Fern, Holly, Chang, Heather, Saravaw, Joyce and Gina
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This year the women of Windward have been meeting weekly for a "Women's
Circle." Our main purpose was to have a regular time and place to get
together and discuss community issues such as integrating new people, the
difficulties that comeup when someone leaves, and coordinating someone's outside work
with responsibilities here, such as the kitchen, feeding pets
while they're gone, etc. Like so much of what happens here, we started
with a good idea, let it gestate without too much interference, and watched
it turn out to be so much more.
Just about all the women of Windward are interested in some form of textile
or fiber art: Holly sews, quilts, crochets and does cross-stitch, Fern
crochets and knits (and was teaching Q to knit), Gina sews and is trying
her hand at spindle spinning, Heather knows how to felt and learned to
crochet (from Fern) last year, and I knit, spin, weave, embroider and
sew. So most of us brought "handiwork" to that first meeting and now
we're learning from each other, coming up with new projects, and filling in
any down-time with those community discussions.
Women have come together in groups like ours throughout history, and they
usually focused on a "home based" activity such as quilting, sewing,
canning and preserving, spring cleaning, or even the weekly wash-day. The
women probably talked about their families, asked for and gave advice, with
the older women sharing their knowledge with the younger.
That's how the skills and traditions of women have passed from one
generation to the next through the centuries. Now that this tradition has
come full circle at Windward, we've christened our group the "Women's Circle."
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