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The Cinder Circle
The fire was always here. We just needed a place to gather around it.
The Cinder Circle was born from a simple belief: that women deserve more than a long weekend of quiet contemplation and green juice. We deserve to make things. To learn things that feel like secrets. To laugh until our sides hurt, stay up too late around a real fire, and go home with calluses on our hands and a patch to show we did it.
This is that place.
The Cinder Circle is a women's gathering community based on Whidbey Island, Washington. We host immersive, multi-day experiences built around craft, skill-building, celebration, and the particular joy of being surrounded by women who just get it.
Every gathering is different. Some are themed around a film, like our Practical Magic 2 Premiere Celebration, held in Coupeville, where the original movie was filmed. Some are built around a season or local event, like Renn Faire or The Witches' Walk. Some are skill intensives where you earn a patch for each discipline you complete. Some exist just to make something beautiful and have a really good time doing it.
All of them have four things in common: you'll make something with your hands, learn something that surprises you, celebrate something worth celebrating, and have time to wander — quietly, unhurriedly, on your own terms.
What We Are
Inspired by the summer camps we know as kids, you can earn and collect patches for each activity you take part in. Visible proof that you did the thing...read a book, earn a patch. Make a broom, earn a patch. Master a tarot spread, divine your future in tea leaves, pour a candle, ground yourself under a Pacific Northwest sky...patch, patch, patch, patch.
Collect them all! Bring them to every gathering. Come back for the next one.
What We Are Not
We are not a spa. We are not a yoga retreat. We are not asking you to wake up at 5am for silent meditation or sit in a sharing circle talking about your feelings for three hours.
You are welcome to bring your feelings. They'll be well-received. But the primary energy here is joy and community. The kind of joy that comes from from dancing around a fire, finishing something you made with your own hands, and realizing you've just made a friend you'll text for the rest of your life.
The Patch System
About Me
Hi. I'm Carrie, and I live on Whidbey Island, surrounded by old growth forest, salt water, and more magic per square mile than most places I've ever been.
By day I work in information security, which means I spend a lot of time thinking about systems, risk, and how things connect. By nature I'm a maker. I run a woodworking and laser engraving shop, make brooms and teach workshops. I design things, I build things, and I believe deeply that creating something with your hands is one of the most grounding acts a person can do.
The Cinder Circle is where those two parts of me finally stopped competing. It's a system built for joy. A program designed to help women connect with each other, with new skills, with a version of themselves that doesn't have to explain her interests or apologize for taking up space around the fire.
The island is part of it. The crafts are part of it. The patches are part of it. But mostly, it's the people. The connections that are made, hopefully for a lifetime.
Come find your circle.
Our Fire
Snapshots of laughter, crafts, and campfires.
Stay close to the fire
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