A poetic beginning for Dappled Fern Fibers

WTIP likes to share news of local businesses — new businesses, new owners, milestone achievements. Our latest offering is about
Dappled Fern Fibers, which is starting online with the goal of weaving the community together.
Mary Ellen Ashcroft and Dorothy Broomall have launched their fiber-themed business with a website offering specialty yarns, patterns, and knit-along workshops. They plan to eventually open a store in a building, but for now, they are building community through their website.

The women came up with the idea for their business while on a canoe trek this fall, as they paddled past the sun-dappled ferns onshore. It reminded them of a favorite poem that seems to turn up in serendipitous moments, Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

We’ve shared the poem below, along with an interview with Mary Ellen and Dorothy.

Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

Rhonda Silence February 19, 2021