Michelle Follett is a teacher, and she puts her heart and soul into the endeavor.  Michelle believes learning is an on-going, never-ending part of living, and expects to learn something from every teaching experience she has.  Her approach to learning is straightforward:  See it, do it, teach it. But who is this teacher of whom you have never heard?

Michelle is from Oak Park, Illinois. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Education, and is considered instrumental in the growth of a small software development business into a multi-million dollar corporation, where she developed their training programs, among other responsibilities. It was during this time of her high-stress career that Michelle discovered her love of weaving, and after a mere three weaving classes bought a 36”, eight-shaft Jack loom, and with the confidence of all new learners decided she could figured it out on her own - how difficult could it be? Weaving in rural Polo, Illinois, with only Deborah Chandler’s quintessential book as her reliable resource, Michelle did not have much concern for the quality of her work, only that it provided her relief from the constant stress of her job.

Upon retirement, Michelle relocated to the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and - as often happens in retirement - she desired to teach again. Recognizing that she did not have sufficient background knowledge about weaving to be a confident and effective teacher, Michelle set out to obtain the skills any student would expect a teacher to have - one that understands the causes of wavy warps, wonky selvedges, and washed out colors.

After successfully completing a Master Weaver certification program through Olds College of Alberta, Canada, Michelle started teaching, and opened a retail location in Fall 2019 in historic Downtown Cambridge, Maryland. The timing of that endeavor was not the best, obviously, but Michelle managed to teach dozens of people (adults and children), and is proud of the weaving community she created there.

It was during the pandemic that Michelle and her husband discovered a love of camping together, and made plans to travel nearly full-time. The challenge became: how to keep teaching?

Michelle took advantage of every opportunity available. She has taught multiple times at established “schools” like the John C. Campbell Folk School, and she has partnered with camping resorts to offer mini-workshops appropriate to both adults and children. Looking for more opportunities, Michelle noticed that many beginner weavers on social media make comment that other resources are not readily available to them. This made her recall her days in rural Polo, Illinois before the prevalence of YouTube videos, state-of-the-art on-line learning resources, and two thousand different answers in Facebook Groups. All of this together led Michelle to her current offering: a modern-day traveling teacher.