As 2025 winds down, I’m thinking ahead to some craft challenges that I’d like to do in the new year. A few months ago, I finally bought a good sewing machine — nothing professional or super fancy.

Bringing light into the darkness is a common ritual during the bleakest nights of wintertime. The Christmas Eve lovefeast in Moravian churches continues on this tradition.

Making lace can be extremely time-consuming.

There have been far too many heated debates about the purpose of decoration among the Pennsylvania Dutch.

This week on my loom are some placemats in a pattern that I’ve called “Meadow Valley.”

This past March, I returned to Marburg, Germany where I did most of my undergraduate college studies.

This week’s post touches on two of my passions: collecting material culture and making material culture.

On a bitterly cold day in February 1784, General Peter Muhlenberg, enroute to Ohio, stayed at the Kucher homestead near present-day Lebanon, Pennsylvania.