What Is Crone's Cottage?

Crone's Cottage is the name for the subset of my artistic endeavors that involves fiber, and most recently, combines fiber art with conservation and environmental awareness.

In the past I've produced a lot of yarn that was hand spun on a supported spindle, and dyed using traditional dyes used in Spanish Colonial New Mexico.  The dyeing took place while I was volunteering in the dye shed of El Rancho de los Golondrinas, in New Mexico.  for the time being, I have no location where I can dye using these methods, which involve mostly items that you can find in your kitchen (with the exception of working with indigo dye).

Since moving to California, I've had less time and fewer resources to pursue the volume of work I did in New Mexico, even though I am still volunteering in a living history museum, teaching about wool, spinning, and weaving as it would have been done over 100 years ago.

I've also been involved in Marine Education and have been trained by the American Cetacean Society in L.A. County as a whale watch naturalist, and have been more and more involved in issues of marine conservation, and have been increasingly aware and concerned about microplastic pollution in our oceans, and how fiber contributes to that issue, as well as other fiber related conservation issues, including the dumping of vast amounts of unwanted clothing items in places like Africa and South America.

Please take a moment to learn more about the problem of discarded clothing. Here are some articles to start with:

• Dead White Man's Clothes (ABC News, August 11, 2021) 
• Chile's Desert Dumping Ground for Fast Fashion Leftovers (Al Jazeera, November 8, 2021)
• Ocean Plastic Pollution: Why Our Clothes Are Part of the Problem (Vox, January 11, 2019)