The Secret Garden

It is killing me!

Not to have a camera.

Ugh! I've been cameraless for six weeks, and I am really missing it. My yarns are going unphotographed, my altars undocumented, weird things in my neighbourhood are going unnoted and all for the want of a digital camera.

Sigh.

It's true that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone. And to think that I was going to spend my savings on a laptop in place of a digital SLR? This is now going to be a really tough decision to make.

In the meantime, here is someone else's yarn porn... mine looks kinda like this, but this is by a very talented woman called Nancy Finn. When I grow up, I want to be her.   

Eat the press

What can I say about Kirsten Anderberg? I discovered her mailing list when I was researching liquid soap, I think, about six months ago. I think it was an article about how using Dr Bronner's liquid soap to brush your teeth with is considered to be counter-culture in the USA. Is America really that conservative?

Anyway, I like her stuff, and I like her voice. I've just been waiting for an excuse to post something from her here. I don't need an excuse, but I'd like to add my own opinion on something rather than just post a link for the sake of it. This is my blog afterall...

This latest email from her struck a chord. I did more or less the same thing as her while I was growing up. It can be hard to feel that you fit in somewhere, and it can be even harder to feel that every part of you fits in the same place, particularly when those parts of you are quite diverse and not particularly well integrated anyway. How do you find a place that accepts your weirdness and lets you be yourself?

I was gutted when I realised that people don't really change as they grow older and there is no end to the cliquey behaviour and the endless dross.

I think the first step is realising that the place you are in restricts you. This was a hard step for me. The second step is deciding to do something about it. I can't think of many times in my life when I have made a conscious decision to change something about my life that I didn't like. For most people I know, what you get given in terms of friends and such is the material you start with and then you work with that to build a life. Walking away from that is almost unheard of. But that is what I did.

I don't know if it was even as simple and direct as that, or whether I can only piece it together in hindsight, but that is basically what happened. I lit the blue touchpaper of my life and stood well back while it exploded.

Now that I have picked up the pieces and fished the superglue out of the drawer I've cobbled together something that resembles the life I want to have. There are still some bits missing, and I have a bag of misshapen bits that don't fit anywhere (don't you always have bits left over when you do DIY?) but on the whole the thing looks OK. I'm quite surprised by that - since it has only really come together in the last few weeks - but it is quite a nice place to be.

Kirsten's email list is still going, as well as her website and I think she's on YouTube too, but if you like things delivered to your inbox, then you can subscribe to her email list here.

 

Sit and spin

I'm now on my sixth copful of singles, and although I say it myself, I feel that I am becoming quite a proficient spinner.....person who spins.....errrr......spinster. And there's the rub. I am now officially a spinster. It struck me as I lay in bed last night, doubled in pain from menstrual cramps, that there are several unavoidable truths that I must face (in Blackadder-meets-the-wise-woman style).

1) I am a woman
2) I am wise....errr.....single
3) I am a spinster

I'm not quite sure how I feel about this uninvited epiphany. On the one hand I live a very independent life. I have filled my days with learning new skills, reading new things, and generally improving my intellectual and spiritual self. On the other hand I have neglected my body and my emotional self. I currently feel like some slightly eccentric aunt who always has a spare toffee in her pocket and some arcane craft on the go.

And yet, some part of me feels a sense of belonging to this word. Spinning was a major occupation for women through the ages, and it feels right to reclaim that heritage. In fact, the reason spinster became a term meaning "unmarried woman" was because so many women signing the wedding register in the 1500s listed it as their occupation. It became a generic term and only then started to take on the slightly pejorative meaning we associate with the word today.

Unsurprisingly, these negative connotations are nothing new, and as late as the 1600s unmarried women of a certain age - spinsters - were regarded with suspicion and were liable to be arrested as prostitutes or witches. Perhaps that is why I feel an affinity for the word? I found this short essay on the subject interesting, but I get the sense that it finishes just as it was getting into its flow.

As a bizarre aside, while looking for a pic to go with this post I found this German-language Irish folk band called the Spinning Wheel. Look at "songtexte" for some lyrics.

Dreams are made of this

I have felt a bit of a fraud lately. While those around me have been making gris-gris and big mojo, I've been pottering in the kitchen making biscuits and cutting shapes from occult play-doh. Don't get me wrong, I've had a fantastic time doing it, but I have started to question my magical credentials.

Even as I spin my spindle on the train each morning I have been trying to make the pieces of my new Practical Magic lifestyle fit together. All I really knew when I started was that spinning was an essential outlet in a time of change. It was meditative, absorbing, and productive. When I spin I only have half an eye on the real world, and sometimes that really is all you want to see of it.

For example, yesterday I caught the Orient Express to work. Oh, only as far as Wimbledon, but it was far enough. When the train drew into my station it was different than normal, and my carriage was fitted with half-moon seats, arranged in an open almost 1960s style. As I started my spinning I could overhear a swarthy man barking Russian into his mobile phone. It rang again - a lilting Baltic accordion tune - and he barked more Russian, "Da...Da...". I glanced up and behind him saw only passing trees and a greying sky, and suddenly I was a Babushka, drafting wool against my heavy denim skirt and spinning quietly. When he got off at the next station, as if to complete the illusion a young couple took his seat and sat, hand in hand, speaking Russian softly to each other too.... but when I put my spindle away the spell was broken. As I looked up, alert again, I read an English headline, heard an English voice, recognised my station though the window.

When I spin my spindle, as my mind relaxes and focuses on the rhythmic pull and drop, pull and drop, I sense a shift and my version of reality softens. In this state I can spin the chanting of a voodoo priest into my yarn and know that while the whorl spins the energy is channelled away and stored, only to be released when the spindle drops. No wonder then that spinners say they spin their dreams.