The Wool Remembers What Love Could Not Save.
Kristi Yapp -
Wool Alchemist
In 2022, my son died from a Fentanyl overdose while my mom was dying of pancreatic cancer, rupturing my life in ways that language could not hold. Becoming an artist was not a choice but a consequence. In the years since, I have poured my grief into learning how to enchant wool, returning again and again to the oldest material of human survival. Through this devotion, I have become an alchemist: transformed, undeniable, and made stranger and stronger by what I survived.
My art saved me. Thank you Lord.
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Fiber Art Workshops
come and make cozy wool felted soap with me! This will be a fun and crafty evening. Your luxurious soap will make a perfect gift, or it will be perfect for you.
This cool craft wraps soap in soft wool, making it last longer and giving you a gentle scrub.
Save $5 when you purchase your ttickets in-person at Garlic Begonias.
Join me for a fun hands-on workshop where kids make colorful soap. Kids ages 10 and up will mix creativity with a little bit of science to make their own wool felted bar of soap.
Save $5 per ticket when you purchase directly from Garlic Begonias.
Get into the holiday spirit and learn the ancient art of wet-felting by crafting your own unique holiday stocking. No experience is necessary. I will bring all of the supplies and I will guide you through each step of the process.
PAC members receive 10% off. Contact e for more information.
Upcoming Events
Poems and Prose
My son died on September 21, 2022. My mom died less than three months later, on December 13, 2022.
Nothing in my life had prepared me for losing them both so close together.
On June 5, 2023—exactly one year after I had first taken my mom to the ER for what seemed like a simple pain in her groin—I began writing the story of those six months. I wrote it day by day on Facebook, reliving everything in real time: the unraveling of her illness, the shock of learning my son had died, and the impossible work of surviving both losses at once.
In 2024, I rewrote the entire story publicly on Substack. More than one-thousand strangers from across the world have read it—grieving parents, caregivers, writers, and people who said they saw their own heartbreak inside mine.
I still write poetry and political commentary on Substack, but the four-hundred-page book I created about those six months is the greatest achievement of my life. I wrote it to remember. I wrote it so that my mother and my son would not disappear into silence. I wrote it because grief, when spoken out loud, becomes something we can hold instead of something that crushes us.
The full story is still available on Substack, free for anyone who needs it. I’m currently editing the pages and repairing broken links so that people can continue to read it without interruption.
On This Day Last Year
Turbo Cancer: June 11, 2022
The day before the world was turned upside down
My mom was healthy. She ate only organic food, engaged in water aerobics daily, volunteered at the food pantry and had a rich, full, active social life.
On June 12, 2022 I took her to the emergency room for a small lump in her groin and the pain that it caused. She would be sent home, with a diagnosis of constipation and a possible hernia. That diagnosis was incorrect.
Within two weeks of this day, my mom’s groin pain became so debilitating that she lost her ability to walk. She needed round-the-clock care. As the lump in her groin grew visibly each day, her pain and suffering grew as well.
We were suddenly thrown into six months of fighting with an invisible enemy. That enemy that was too fast and too strong for us to take on.
However, on this day, she was healthy. On this day, I wasn’t worried about my mom at all. On this day, I assumed that there was still plenty of time.
About The Artist
Kristi Yapp is a fiber artist and wool alchemist, whose work explores grief, memory, ancestry, and transformation through felted wool. Using traditional fiber techniques, she creates sculptural forms that honor the ancient relationship between human hands and animal fiber. Wool - one of humanity’s oldest materials - becomes both subject and medium, carrying stories of survival, tenderness, and resiliance. Her work bridges personal loss with collective memory, inviting viewers to slow down, touch something timeless, and remember what cannot be undone.
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Music That Speaks To Me
Music is a part of my studio practice. The sounds playing while I work seep into the wool the same way memory, grief and repetition do. Roots reggae, classic rock, and the occasional modern song help me enter a focused, creative state where time softens and the work unfolds without force. This music informs the rhythym, mood, and emotional temperature of the art, and I share it here as another thread in the process - an invitation into the atmosphere where the work is made.