Spring Lineup, Stand Up for Cherrydale, & Art as Activism

March 22, 2026

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2–3 minutes

Spring has sprung! 🌸🌸🌸 The cherry blossoms are blooming and the new spring calendar is out for mending at Cherrydale Library. 🍒🍒🍒

Spring Mending Circle Lineup for Cherrydale Library

Here’s our lineup for Mondays 2-4 PM. As always, feel free to bring any of your mending projects to mend in community.

March 23: Open Lab
March 30: Needle Felting
April 6: Open Lab
April 13: Embroidery Mending
April 20: Open Lab
April 27: Visible Mending 101 – Making a Mending Kit & Sashiko Palm Thimble
May 4: Open Lab
May 11: Microweave Darning
May 18: Open Lab

Last week, we made sashiko samplers and repaired jeans and admired some socks mended with a spiral blanket stitch.

Stand Up to Keep Cherrydale Library 🍒📚🪡

Our weekly community visible mending circle is the most popular adult program at Cherrydale Library with over 250 people attending since we started on June 30. Our program is community-powered with upcycled textiles, volunteer Mend-tors, and a community-/library-crowdsourced mending cart in the loft. It has been a pleasure building this culture of creative repair, sustainability, and community.

However, we risk losing the program because the Arlington County manager is proposing to permanently shut down Cherrydale Library after June 30 of this year (yes, exactly a year after our first circle). The county board makes the final decision sometime in April. In the meantime, the board is conducting its public budget hearing on Tuesday, March 24, starting at 6:30 pm, where citizens can argue, in a two-minute speech, in favor of keeping our library open.

I have signed up to speak. If you care about our circle and want to ensure that Cherrydale Library stays open for all ❤️, please show your support by attending and standing in solidarity when I speak about our circle at the following County Board work session on the proposed budget:

Date: Tuesday, March 24

Time: 6:30 p.m.

Where: County Board Room, 2100 Clarendon Blvd. 307, Arlington, VA 22201

Art as Activism

I had the privilege of being invited to Bella Maria Varela’s Art as Activism class last week to discuss why community mending circles matter and the reasons why I started Art on the Mend. Bella Maria Varela (upper right photo) is an Assistant Professor and International Arts and Culture Program Leader for the Women’s Leadership Program at George Washington University’s Mount Vernon Campus. We had an in-class circle focusing on needle felting and our prompt was “What unique perspectives do you have based on your identity or learned life experiences?” We all shared our stories and mended our socks, jeans, shoes, hoodies, and t-shirts. It was a powerful reminder of how storytelling and mending can come together to build connection, care, and collective understanding.