The Secret Garden

Unspun

Unspun. Raw. Fibre in its natural state with all the nepps and burrs and tangles from the adventures of its ovine owner.

Unspun. A blog. Thoughts and opinions in their natural state with all the raw edges and harsh emotion of a woman who lives with her heart.

Imbolc is a time for spinning. It is also a time for reflection and introspection. Traditionally, women would gather on Candlemas Eve and tell tales of childbirth around a Bridie doll in the ashes of the hearth. In the morning when they woke they would examine the ashes and the footprints of mice and augur their fate for the coming year. The fertility of the land, of their bellies. Imbolc, or Omeilc, meaning literally "in the belly" and the festival of ewe's milk.

Who is to say they didn't spin at these gatherings? A woman's hands were rarely empty. Brigid, the Celtic goddess associated with this festival is a goddess of spinning, of poetry and storytelling.

In my own celebration of this time of year I look to these crafts within me. I look at my productivity (I now have a basket filled with skeins of my handspun yarn) and I look within myself too. Brigid tells us to "untangle the threads of our Fate, be a weaver of tales tall and true". It is no accident that the Fates were weavers, who cut and measured the threads of a life. Or that the Celtic imagining of these women was visceral - a loom warped with human entrails, and a skull for a shuttle. Weaving the threads of life from the detritus of death.

The last 18 months have been a continuing journey for me, to experience and understand the spiritual side of spinning. My teenage years were raw and unspun. My emotions vivid, harsh, and animal. Inga still captures the essence of my youth, speaking of a time of riot grrrls and handprinted zines. But my life has moved on. I have mellowed, at last, (at least partly), today my loom would be warped with silk, and my shuttle made from bone. Is it the spinning that is changing me?

I am gradually weaving the bright threads of my life.

I am the soap (part 2)

I wasn't going to write more now, but checking to see if my last post displayed properly I happened to click on the "soap" category. I got a shock. Firstly I was shocked by how few posts there are in here, and secondly how angry they sound. My immediate feeling was to recategorise them - to remove the ones not entirely about soap and to hide the rants among the morasse of uncategorised material on my blog. But I made a deal with myself at the start not to re-write history, so I can't start doing so now.

Instead, I realised that what I have in my soap category is an analysis of a misspent soaping year. Compared to Bex, whose loft groans under the weight of her soap hump, my output for 2007 has been paltry. A few "mega-batches" from the occasional soap binge during the reign of the voodoo queen, and one or two quite frankly generic batches from the second half of the year when the risk of being chatted to mid-pour made me shy away from anything too involved or any soap that required focussed magical intent.

It has been a furtive, angry year of soap.

By contrast, my first batch of soap in 2008 has a smooth two-colour swirl. I soaped at 25 degrees, taking my time to let the oils cool and to blend the ultramarines thoroughly with the traced soap. There was no chatting, just a passing interested query: "what are you making?" as a disembodied voice disappeared up the stairs. It was very zen, and I don't think that has to do with the recipe, even if it was meditation soap that I was making.

I had thought that I didn't want to make another batch of two-finger soap right now because I didn't want to upset any good thing I have going in my life at this point, but maybe I should. Maybe I should make a batch so that I can make a clean break and put a bad soaping year behind me.

I am the soap

I am feeling under par today, so bear with me. I think the crap explosion that was my procrastocrafting weekend has worn me out, and my evening of cutting and photographing soap on Monday night finished me off. I may have a lurgy.

Nevertheless, behold my productivity! In all its soapy glory.

We have (clockwise from top) lavender tea rounds, rosehip and ginger, meditation soap and a felted flower. The teapot just got in the way and it looks sort of domesticated so I let it stay.

I had hoped to write something intelligent and perhaps mildly funny about the title of this post and how it came to be, but I think I'm about to slide off my chair and into oblivion.

Meditation soap - caution may cause you to fall headlong into your navel never to return.

A thousand words

That's a very grand title for a fairly mundane post. It should be a post about an essay, or an epic poem, not a post about a weekend at home with no camera.

But this is my blog, so I can write what I like.

The procrastocrafting urge was still strong this weekend, so I indulged. Actually, to say I indulged is an understatement. I totally immersed myself. On Friday night I spun fine fine Merino singles for baby clothes. On Saturday I made a candle and on Sunday I made a felted flower and finished the evening behind my wheel.

The Merino wool is for Mary. She was my Nanna's best friend, and misses her dearly. They used to sit together and knit baby clothes for the premature babies unit at their local hospital. She's declining since my Nanna died, and the only time I saw her eyes light up when I visited was when we talked about a cross-stitch that my Nanna worked on just before she died. She became animated, and happy. I want to do something special for her, so I'm spinning her the softest, most beautiful wool that I could find. It will be the finest wool that I have spun on my wheel, as fine as any spindle-spun that I could manage.

It's not entirely altruistic. Spinning a lot, with purpose, is highly absorbing. I spun until 3am on Friday night, only stopping when my eyes bleared and my knees complained. My mind was alert but relaxed and empty. I was aware of my surroundings - the TV, the soft candlelight, the scent of the Christmas tree - but my total focus was on the wheel in front of me. I felt the soft yarn sliding through my fingers, and my foot easily pumping the treadle and the whirling wheel.

The candle was actually a job. Bex talks about having "spinning plates" - unfinished items on your mental to do list that drain your energy. Your conscious mind may forget, but the unconscious mind remembers everything, and a little bit of memory is devoted to every single thing you ever said you would do. To clear and quiet the mind it is necessary to stop the plates from spinning one by one. For me, with my many crafting interests, this seems to mean finishing off the projects I have set aside.

I made the candle from recycled wax, and it was very satisying to get out the hammer and break up my old candles. Into the bubbling pot went all the scraps of wax I had lying around the brewing cupboard. I count that as tidying!

I used a Pringles can for the mould, and was pleased when I turned it out. Instead of a smooth and boring surface, the wax had reacted with the foil lining and had come out in a series of rough rings. I couldn't have achieved the effect if I had tried, and I am sure I never will again. The colour turned out a deep pine green, and with the roughness it reminds me of the Christmas tree that reluctantly came down that night.

This is where a picture really does say a thousand words. Who wants to read a post about crafts with no pictures in it?

The felted flower was pure indulgence. It was another spinning plate, and it was either make it or make dinner, and the flower won. I love to make felt, and this was particularly fun, as I could manhandle and sculpt and throw the flower, knowing that whatever came out the other side of the process would be beautiful.

It is drying now, so perhaps I will post a picture of it some time afterall... I should be getting a computer of my own at the weekend that I can use my camera with. There will be lots of pictures. I can't see my need to procrastocraft abating any time soon.