20: Elizabeth Kneafsey: The Wild Wool Shepherdess

Elizabeth Kneafsey, the Wild Wool Shepherdess, creates unique, wild and rugged woven rugs, tanned leather hides and felted sheeprugs with wool harvested from her own flock of organic, heritage breed sheep which conservation graze hay meadows to help support our declining wildlife and improve soil structure. A practitioner of traditional, ancestral skills is now teaching small holders and individuals through workshops and retreats how to bring back value to wool and live more sustainably in harmony and connection with our land, wildlife, waters and Mother Nature.

Her first book The Wild Wool Shepherdess: Weave the Ancient Path, Reignite Your Feminine Fire is out today from Hay House.

Wolves – yes she has a wolf!, dogs, sheep, herons and owls – being in relationship with animals and what it teaches us

Animal symbology

Reclaiming access to the land

How she became a shepherdess

Crafting with wool

The husband coat

Ancestral crafts – why they matter

Making her declaration of intention as a child… and a woman

Being a black sheep

Writing her book

Dreaming a gathering of women

Creating in community

The challenges of charging for our work and supporting what it takes to create and teach

Extended episode –

Her adopted Native name and the story of how she was the first white woman in several hundred years to be adopted by that tribe

Women as beacons

More on ancestors

How clothing impacts how we are in the world

Books we mentioned

The Wild Wool Shepherdess: Weave the Ancient Path, Reignite Your Feminine Fire

The Witch and the Wildwood

Women who Run with the Wolves

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