Hi, I’m Erin. I traded twenty years in fashion for a life of slow craft. A dialogue between the past and present, my studio Underwater Weaving honors the techniques I learned from my mother growing up in Maine. Explore our handmade world of baskets, weaving kits, and creative gatherings here.
Permission to rest.
What a beautiful way to start the year. Maybe, like me, you’re still savoring that unspoken instruction. While we have been quietly plotting plans for the months ahead, I’m still moving slowly. I find comfort in creativity during the colder months; making, weaving, and vision-boarding (especially in the sacred early morning) are ways I ground myself when the world feels frantic, or I crave a cocoon. I find winter to be the perfect opportunity to wade in a creative dream state and gather inspiration in a basket.
I often think about why this weaving journey started for me in the first place and I always return to The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction by Ursula K. Le Guin.
It is, at it’s core, a powerful reimagining of human history, but the essay has become somewhat personal to me. Traditionally, we are taught the “Hero’s Journey”—a linear story centered on the hunter, the spear, the conquest, and the conflict. But Le Guin challenges this. She proposes that the first cultural tool wasn’t a weapon to kill, but a container to hold.
Before the spear, there was the basket.
In this view, the earliest human stories weren’t about slaying mammoths, but about gathering oats, carrying water, and sustaining life for and with one another. It is a shift from a story of dominance to a story of care. Le Guin wrote: “If science fiction is the mythology of modern technology, then its myth is tragic... I would like to propose an alternative myth: not the Hero, but the Carrier Bag.”
To me, basket making is a living metaphor for this alternative narrative. A discovery that makes me feel human and alive.
In a world that celebrates productivity, speed, and spectacle, the resurgence of basketry signals a return to slowness. It is a quiet rebellion against disposability. When we weave, we make something designed to hold rather than to conquer.
This aligns with a cultural shift we are experiencing, and the reason why I started the studio. Collectively, we are craving meaningful, tactile experiences in a digital world. We are turning to the arts that connect us to the earth, to our ancestors, and to ancient crafts.
In this context, the basket is not just a vessel—it’s a carrier of memory, ritual, and resistance. It holds our time, our attention, and our care.
This winter, I invite you to embrace the energy of the Carrier Bag. Let us gather our intentions, hold space for ourselves, and weave with the purpose of discovery and preservation. Happy New Year.
Some Things to Taste
Thank you for being here xx
