I’ve spent my life chasing patterns: in code, in data, in fiber, and lately, in ink. I started working in technology in 1987, and by the time I retired, I’d spent over fifteen years in information security, the last stretch of it hunting hackers, which turns out to be its own kind of weaving: pulling threads together until a shape emerges. Along the way I wrote seven technical books on Novell networking and built an award-winning multi-location education department, teaching people to see structure in systems that looked like chaos.
Then I left the corporate world behind to reinvent myself as a fiber artist.
Ravens Webs started in June 2017, born out of a need to combat tech burnout, something to do with my hands while my mind sorted through the noise of a demanding career. When I retired in 2024, it became ‘the thing I get to do full-time’. I weave on three floor looms, spin my own yarn, dye fiber, knit, and paint in watercolor and ink, and I still can’t shake the puzzle-solver in me. I plan month-long projects the way I used to plan product launches: Inktober, a month of painted holiday cards, whatever obsession catches me next. I write about the process: the failures, the techniques, the moments a pattern finally clicks, because I think the making is more interesting than the finished thing.
Something new is taking shape on my loom that I’m not ready to name. There’s a thread I’m following, one that asks what a scarf can carry besides warmth and fashion. It has intention woven into it, literally.
If you like watching someone turn a lifetime of chasing patterns into something you can wear, use, or display, pull up a chair. Come for the finished pieces, stay for the messy middle, that’s usually where the good stuff is.
Ravens Webs 