Commentary: Telling Stories. Weaving Community. Laughing With the ‘Happy Hookers’

Even though I’m sure she’s said it hundreds of times, she can never say it with a straight face. “We’re the Happy Hookers!” Jerre McDanald cheerily declares as she stands to introduce herself. And while I’ve seen her say this countless times to people as an introduction, it never fails to get a laugh. Jerre is at the Columbia Pacific Heritage Museum in Ilwaco, Washington with a group of 10 women that were asked to participate in a story circle led by Rural Assembly about women and fiber arts. Jerre, who is in her 90s, has hooked rugs for over 40 years. Rug hooking, a technique that dates back hundreds of years, involves using a hooked tool to pull strips of wool, often recycled from old garments, through a backing typically made of linen or burlap. The hooked designs are most commonly used as rugs, but can also be made as wall hangings, table runners, and pillow covers. I was first introduced to rug hooking when I was five years old. My parents took me to the Cranberrian Faire, an annual celebration at the museum of all things cranberry and local craft. The Ocean Park Rug Club, or Happy Hookers, were putting on a demonstration of rug hooking and invited me to sit with them and give it a go. The women praised my efforts and told me that when I turned seven, I was welcome to join them during their rug hooking weekly meetups. I don’t know if they expected me to actually join their ranks, but two years later, I showed up to my first meeting and officially became the “youngest hooker.” When I didn’t have school, my mom would drop me off with a sack lunch and my rug hooking project, and I’d sit with the women and hook for hours at a time. I didn’t finish many projects… one of the few I remember is a small, stuffed pillow with a hooked lamb on it and a light green flannel back, but I deeply remember the softness I felt in that space – the simple conversations, light gossip, sharing of techniques and tools. I always felt like the center of attention, getting peppered with questions about school and likes and dislikes. Eventually I got busy and showed up less often, but whenever I run into women from that group, they still proudly call me “their youngest hooker” and it is a badge I wear with pride. Today’s gathering came out of a Traveling Quilt project from our friends at Radically Rural in Keene, New Hampshire. The theme of their 2024 conference was Regenerating Rural, including an examination of Reweaving Our Social Fabric. During the gathering, participants worked together to create a small patchwork quilt that would act as a traveling exhibit, moving from one rural community to the next. “The quilt you see here,” says the booklet that traveled with the quilt, “is a physical representation of how we all bring our own patterns, stories, and ways of being, and how, when woven together, these differences create something beautiful and resilient.” Since then, the quilt has traveled to five communities across the country, including Belchertown, MA, Lewisburg, TN, and Brainerd, MN. Each community has found its own way to either add to it or celebrate its mission. When I heard about the Traveling Quilt in early 2025, I knew it needed to come to Ilwaco to the local museum where there is a long tradition of quilters, rug hookers, and weavers who utilize the space to gather and share their craft. I wanted to use the quilt as an excuse to get together some of those women for a story circle that the museum could record as an oral history for their archive. Stories of women-driven crafts, like quilting and knitting, are often overlooked and undocumented. I hatched the plan with RA’s Director of Programs and Partnerships, Taneum Fotheringill, a woman devoted to craft herself, and Michelle Calud-Clemente, Executive Director of the museum. Rural Assembly and the broader Center for Rural Strategies team often utilizes story circles as a tool to build relationship and connection between a group and elicit stories with a common thread. The basic premise involves gathering a small group of people, ideally sharing a meal together, and then going around in a circle with each person sharing a story via a prompt given by the facilitator. Our stories were guided by the prompt “Tell us about a time that craft contributed to your life”. Before our official circle, everyone introduced themselves and shared a piece they are proud of with the group. Jerre presented a few projects including a hooked rug patterned with squiggly ringed circles, somewhat amoeba-like, in multiple hues of blues, purples, whites, and deep earth tones on a black background. Many of the women shared things they had made, elaborate modern quilts or hand-woven towels, but a few brought family heirlooms, like a quilt hand stitched by a grandmother, tattered with time, but no less loved. While this show and tell wasn’t an official part of the story circle, it got the women chatting and swapping techniques and tips, particularly around preservation of treasured family keepsakes. One of my personal favorite show-and-tell items was brought by Paula Glandon, Taneum’s grandmother. She explained that when she went to look around her house for an item to bring, she realized that she gives most everything she knits away. All she had to show was a hand knit washcloth. I loved the sentiment of that. The idea of hours and hours spent making things that are ultimately given away. The story circle was, in a sense, along these lines. Spending time together, simply giving our stories and knowledge to each other… another example of the gifts we give. While the Traveling Quilt was visiting Ilwaco, local quilter Donella Lucero, added a custom square depicting North Head Lighthouse, which stands at the mouth of the Columbia River. After the story circle, the quilt will travel to Lynchburg, Virginia to continue on its mission of community weaving. Being in the story circle, at the same museum where I saw rug hooking for the first time, took me back to those early days of learning the craft and feeling listened to, cared for, and encouraged. Neither the circle nor those afternoons rug hooking were particularly groundbreaking in a transformational sense, but transformation isn’t always necessary for creating a sense of belonging and care. Weaving community and relationships is often quiet and simple, and hopefully fun too. A few days after the circle, I ran into Dian Kazlauskas, one of the participants and a proud Happy Hooker. She laughed and said, “I have no idea if you got what you wanted with that circle but boy, did we all have a great time.” If you would like to learn more about the Traveling Quilt or host it in your own community, please reach out to Lillian Chase at the Hannah Grimes Center for Entrepreneurship, organizers of Radically Rural, at lillian@hannahgrimes.com. Madeline Matson is the director of the Rural Assembly, a program of the Center for Rural Strategies. On July 23, 2026, Rural Assembly is hosting Everywhere, a free virtual gathering to imagine new ways of expanding opportunity, sharing resources, and building a more connected, thriving rural America. Click here to register.