Hi y'all! Happy Holy Week, and Happy Easter!
My card for today represents a journey! It might even be called a pilgrimage of a sort.
A pilgrimage is a purposeful, often spiritual, journey to a sacred place or shrine, undertaken for devotion, penance, or personal transformation. It signifies a deep, respectful visit to a meaningful site—either religious or secular—representing a break from daily life to seek profound meaning.
I'll share the card first and then you can scroll further to read more about the inspiration for it. You'll see why, when I sat down to stamp, I was immediately drawn to these beautiful greens! Definitely a case of one craft influencing another! If you're here for only card-making, you can check out the card and then skip the rest.
While the colors were inspired by Iona Abbey and my freshly finished hand-spun yarn, the verse on the front was why I chose to make another gate-fold card. He is The Way. The Shepherd sits at the gate and His sheep know His voice.
I used beautiful papers in various shades of green from three different Craft Consortium paper pads for this project.
I also used verses from our Good News series (product of the week) and the Eucalyptus leaves from one of our sympathy sets. If you look closely, you'll also notice a tiny bit of gold heat embossing on the top left of the inside.
Here's a close-up of the verse at the bottom right corner of the inside.
Tomorrow (Easter Sunday) there'll be a new product of the week, which means that TODAY is the LAST DAY for a discount on the Good News series!
Supplies:
Two years ago I took my first tour of Scotland and one of our stops along the way was the Abbey of Iona. Upon my return I purchased some spinning fiber inspired by the lichen-covered stone of the Abbey. (The fiber was prepared by the Green Orthodox nuns of Inglenook Fibers. Steffie, one of the Inglenook nuns, had also taken a trip to Iona at around the same time I had, and had come back with a collection of gorgeous photos that inspired several color ways).
Here is the Inglenook fiber in the Iona Abbey color way, and Steffie's photo that inspired it.
The next year I took another Scotland tour and took my spindle and Iona Abbey fiber with me.
I continued to spin throughout that trip, and after returning home. It took me months to leisurely spindle through all those little tufts of fluff. I started September 28, 2025 and finished just last week, March 27, 2026. You can probably imagine that spinning, especially spindling, is quite calming, soothing, and meditative (revisit that Pilgrimage definition!). It is a really wonderful prelude to other "slow stitching" crafts. I love it so much! The colors and textures really speak to me.
In the end, when I lined them up in pairs in gradient color order, all those little turtles looked like little Brussels sprouts waiting to be roasted. LOL!
I joined them end to end and wound them into a two-ply plying ball.
I plied them on one of my spinning wheels and this is the resulting skein, ~ 700 yards of sport-weight yarn. (So think about that...1400 yards of spinning singles and then another pass through for 700 yards of plying). Once it is plied, it is soaked and then hung to dry to set the twist.
I was very excited to have finished this very sentimental spin, and immediately went searching for an appropriate pattern for the yarn even though I really already have too many projects on my needles. I couldn't help it, I couldn't wait to make something with it!
I'm so excited to see how the stitches will play out in this tweedy yarn, and to watch the gradient develop as this shawl becomes larger. So far, I really love it. This is a mystery knit, so the pattern is released in a series of clues. I'm currently working on Clue 4 of 7 (the last clue will arrive on April 25th). This next section is a bit of chevron lace.
I am so happy that I have several more Scotland-inspired Inglenook color ways to spin. I will meditate my way through the series, savoring every second of this silky fiber as it slides through my fingers and winds its way onto my spindles. Who knows...maybe you'll see another spinning inspired project or two as time goes on!
Next up: Iona Golden Sunrise!
I hope you have a wonderful weekend, and a very blessed and happy Easter!
Posts
