Welcome! I’m Carmen Shenk and I’m a contemplative textile artist. I’m headed to grad school in the fall of 2022 (Eastern Mennonite Seminary) and I’m enjoying weaving and making things with my hand woven cloth – so stay tuned for an Etsy store update.

I also have a YouTube channel where I have created over 500 videos (wow, has it really been that many?!) with 770K views – mostly on our lives in a tiny house, or life after the tiny house in our smart, sexy, small house, and a variety videos on simple faith and what it means to follow the homeless man of Nazareth. Oh, and how to cut your own pixie haircut. And weaving. Lots of weaving. Visit my channel

It is my intention to get back to making videos one of these days, but for now I am enjoying time at the loom. Funny, Covid made me realize that I wanted to be at the loom just like my Mennonite ancestors who were weavers. Weaving feels like my creative and spiritual home.

Visit my YouTube channel’s featured playlists:

66 videos
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44 videos
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55 videos
28 videos

Visit my bio, discover my first book, and subscribe to my email list.

Behind the scenes in my studio:

My whole drive to school this morning was strikingly beautiful. Autumn in the Shenandoah Valley is beautiful anyway but I crested the hill to a sunrise scene with beautiful pale orange sky against blue/purple mountains and was moved by the beauty of it all. Then at various points noticing the sunrise along my 45 minute drive - wow! So beautiful! So blessed to have this opportunity!! I’m the first in my family line in grad school, even though my grandfather was a Mennonite pastor, I have no knowledge of him having any college or grad school education. Chapel is starting so I will cut this short. My love to each of you!! Hello friends! Hope your day is lovely! I have spent some time at the loom this morning which was lovely, and I need to do some reading for class. Other than that, I plan to do nothing today. I’m weaving the third panel of cloth for my long jacket and pretty impatient to wear it. Still, the contemplative work of weaving gives me joy at every step in the process. Everything from dying the yarn in my favorite colors, to warping the loom and now to picking the colors of each weft strand in order… all of it is richly rewarding on so many levels! This is the third section of four, and I have given each a different personality so to speak. Some have a very careful color blend from orchid into periwinkle very carefully- others are higglty-pigglty with these colors and others streaked into the cloth. I put a few popcorn pops of yarn loops into this one, might add a few more of the mood strikes. The journey is the destination. Milestone: the ol Benz has gone 320,000 MILES! I have been watching for this moment for a week and a half! 😀 I sent this woven piece through the laundry and it turned into butter. I love the felting process! Plus, some of this mystery yarn I had laying around must have had some cashmere or something - crazy how soft it became. I love it so much!! Found in the backseat of the Rolls we just added to the collection. I feel seen. LOL! We joke that our dream property has a tiny house for us and a HUGE garage workshop. I also want room for a tiny house village with a community center, but I digress. Might as well dream big, otherwise what is the point of dreaming at all?!