Why I Keep Coming Back to Making Zen

This year marks my third time speaking at the Making Zen Online Retreat, and it's become one of the events I look forward to most.

If you haven't come across it before, Making Zen is a five day online retreat bringing together thirty artists, each teaching a workshop, entirely free to attend. This year it runs from 28 September to 2 October 2026.

Why I keep coming back

There's a free version of the entire event, a full week of crafting and learning at no cost. That, to me, says a lot about where Making Zen comes from. Kate Ward, who founded it, built it from a place of genuine care for people and their creative practice, and our businesses feel aligned in that respect. We both believe in sharing skills because of the good it does for people, not just as a transaction.

There's also a strong make-do-and-mend thread running through the retreat, which sits closely alongside mental wellbeing in my mind. Making time for a creative practice, using what you have, slowing down, these all tie together.

The community around Making Zen reflects that too. People don't just watch the workshops, they share their work in the Facebook group, post their variations, and talk about what they've made. Seeing what people come up with from a single project brief is rewarding to watch as a teacher.

My workshop this year: Spooky Stone Weaving

My session this year is Spooky Stone Weaving, a beginner friendly project that needs minimal equipment. I've got twenty years of weaving experience behind me, and there's still nothing I enjoy more than weaving on a stone found on a beach.

It follows a theme in the projects I bring to Making Zen: minimal equipment, achievable in a short space of time, and satisfying to actually finish. Last year's project was woven on a piece of cardboard. There's something valuable about completing a project rather than it sitting half finished, and keeping things manageable on both time and skill helps with that. It works well for complete beginners, and experienced weavers tend to enjoy it too, since you can take the same technique and apply it to any theme or pattern beyond the Halloween one we've used here.

The free ticket gets you access to all thirty workshops as they're released across the five days, including mine. You can get yours here: Making Zen Retreat.

If you'd like more than the retreat week itself, there's also a VIP Pass, currently available at the early bird price of $97 USD until the retreat starts on 28 September. After that it rises to $147 USD, still excellent value for everything included, but the early bird price is the one to catch. It includes:

• Lifetime access to the recordings from the week

• All of the workshops' accompanying worksheets, collated into a Making Zen eBook

• Access to all of the artists' VIP Pass contributions

• Access to live sessions held during retreat week, plus unlimited access to those recordings

• The Making Zen Podcast, an audio only version of the retreat's Zoom chats

As a VIP bonus for my contribution, I'm including my Brown Onion Skins PDF, a guide to naturally dyeing with onion skins.

You can grab your free ticket and find the VIP upgrade details here: Making Zen Retreat.

If you'd like to join us for a future workshop, head over to our website for upcoming dates: Elka Textiles.