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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55 videos
28 videos

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

Behind the scenes in my studio:

My mom is celebrating her 83rd Birthday with a huge party in heaven! Her pain is gone, she can finally breathe freely. She slipped away peacefully in the night yesterday and I’m so relieved that her pain is finally over. We shall miss her! Good hair day. Until I stepped outside. LOL! #windyday I made my cotton handwoven cloth into some washcloths and small makeup remover pads. It was extra fun that I wove with a yarn color I didn’t really like for a few inches of the cloth - then gave up and went to other colors in the stash. Life is too short for weaving with colors you don’t love!!! That one strip of a different color was perfect for making these small makeup remover pads and I’m in love with them - crazy soft! They won’t show stains like my white ones do. Love them! Might need to make more! I completely revamped and expanded my yarn wall with a bunch of hand dyed yarns that I have dyed over the course of the last two weeks. I am completely in love with how it turned out!! I am having trouble leaving this room! #yarnwall #yarnstorage I just went through some old photos and found these prehistoric selfies from before selfies were a thing! And my personal favorites include the flash going off in the bathroom mirror and the backdrop not being quite big enough for that weird profile one. (Swipe to see the full buffet of crazy) And of course having an *actual camera* in the shot - with the shot out of focus of course! Oh, this is hilarious! #ifeelsoold Actual cameras are tricky. I don’t think I ever got the hang of film cameras. Purples hanging out to dry. I’m completely enamored by what happens when you mix heat, acid, dye, water, and wool. It’s pure chemistry - but it FEELS like MAGIC!! 💜💙💚