The Secret Garden

A Cunning Plan

The very fact that I am even thinking about this stuff means that I am settling down again. I'm sleeping properly, eating properly, and generally taking a healthy interest in my surroundings. Most tellingly, my urge to procrasto-craft is finally abating. Shame really, as I almost had enough yarn spun to knit a scarf...(how do you show wry humour in words these days? I refuse to use smilies in a blog).

Anyway, I had a very interesting chat with my new housemate last night, and yesterday I found an excellent website about people who have trodden this path before me. I'm also reading Terry Pratchett's latest book, Wintersmith, and loving his irreverent and eccentric approach to life.

Know Thyself

One of the most important lessons I have had to learn is that it doesn't really matter who you are, it is knowing and accepting who you are that counts. Perhaps I am more introspective than most, but I think self-awareness and self-acceptance are the two best things about growing up.

In that vein, here's my results from the What Major Arcana Card Are You? quiz that my friends have been doing. It's a nice surprise that it wasn't the nine of bloody wands - again! (What is the major arcana equivalent to the nine of wands anyway?)

You scored as VIII - Strength. Strength is not just physical strength, it also means emotional and spiritual strength. It is the Strength to do what you know is right in the face of opposition. Strength to defy convention and authority. Stength does not have to be used directly. It can be inner strength that supports one in the face of attacks on what they hold dear. The person of Strength remains true to their beliefs. In a Tarot reading, this card can indicate overcoming of obstacles and refusal to be beaten down. If badly aspected this card can indicate loss of faith, failure of Will.

VIII - Strength		94%
XI: Justice		81%
XIII: Death		81%
II - The High Priestess		75%
III - The Empress		75%
XIX: The Sun		75%
I - Magician		63%
IV - The Emperor		63%
XVI: The Tower		63%
X - Wheel of Fortune		56%
0 - The Fool		44%
XV: The Devil		38%
VI: The Lovers		38%

Which Major Arcana Tarot Card Are You?
created with QuizFarm.com

Complicated

And just when I thought it was safe to raise my head above the parapet too... it's a simple song, but to me it speaks volumes.

Crazy Faith
I lit my love and watched it burn
Asking nothing in return
Except the lessons I will learn
By holding crazy faith

I've been touched by that bright fire
Down to the root of my desire
While the smoke it rises higher
On crazy faith

You're not asking if I love this man
I know you don't, you don't believe you can
Yet I've seen love open like a dancer's fan
It's crazy I know
But my faith says so, it tells me

Am I a fool for hanging on?
Would I be a fool to be long gone?
When is daylight going to dawn
On my crazy faith?

The questions will not let me sleep
Answers buried way too deep
At the bottom of a lover's leap
Made by crazy faith

You're not asking if I love this man
I know you don't, you don't believe you can
Yet I've seen love open like a dancer's fan
It's crazy I know, but my faith says so
It tells me

Love your losing, lose your love
Let the hawk fly from the glove
Then do not search the skies above
Search your crazy faith

Love is lightning, love is ice
It only strikes the lucky twice
Once, so you will know the price
And once for crazy faith

You're not asking if I love this man
I know you don't, you don't believe you can
Yet I've seen love open like a dancer's fan
It's crazy I know,
But my faith says so
it tells me.

- Alison Krauss & Union Station

To dye for?

Yes I know it is a bit cheesy, but give an ex-journalist a break. I've been working hard lately and I'm rusty. I'm feeling much better than I did yesterday, which is likely to be for many reasons, but it means that I'm back on form, and am as obsessed about fibre-craft as I was last week.

Many American websites talk about dyeing wool with Kool-Aid. This I find very disturbing. How can something that will permanently dye wool to neon shades be good for your insides? I decided to dig a bit and found this.

My favourite bit:

"You have to try Kool-Aid dyeing! You don't need a separate set of utensils. If you hate the color, you can drink it. It makes the kitchen smell terrific. It works without any mordants. The colors are a stitch. And if the baby gets in it, you only have to worry about burns, not poison."

Yes I am sure that it is just unfortunate wording, but it worries me all the same. Here's the full range of Kool-Aid colours. I wonder if you cut an American kid open if their insides would look a lot like this?

Uprooted

I moved house this weekend. Exactly six weeks after my "chat" with my father. So far I am ambivalent about it - he clearly regrets that it happened this way but at the same time thinks it is about time that I spread my wings. I think I feel the same way.

In truth, I feel like a plant that has been uprooted and replanted. This is the first time that I have really left home with no plans to go back, and as I retrieved my belongings from around the house I swear I heard those roots rip.

The Procrasto-crafter strikes!

It seems that I am procrasto-crafting. This is what I do when there is something going on that I'd rather not get involved in - I get an insatiable urge to make stuff. Any stuff. At the moment it is fibre-related stuff. I find myself on eBay drooling over neat little bundles of coloured wool and wondering what I could make with it all.

I get frustrated because I can't think of things to make to justify buying all of this wool, but I think today I have found a good compromise. If I spin, I can make masses and masses of yarn without having to decide what to make with it. Yarn is yarn! Now I understand the stash addiction. You always need just...one...more....colour...and this one is so pretty...

Anyway, have a look at the picture. It is my first ever yarn spun this evening on a drop spindle. I'm very proud. It involved a lot of swearing, and more use of my teeth than is strictly ladylike, but I made yarn! All on my own! Yay!

Heart Felt

Now that I have my pile of bright green fluff, I am wondering what to do with it. The wool isn't good enough to spin, but it will make good felt. I have made a couple of felted items in the past - last winter I used some blended merino roving to make some very organic looking slippers. That was fun in many ways, not least finding a way to felt them while wearing them on my feet! But now I am on the prowl for ideas.

This book looks promising, and this website just blew me away. Sharon made the beautiful Mother Earth vessel in the picture. It's just stunning. It appeals to me in so many ways. To me, being able to put your personal baraka into making a thing of nature, from natural fibres, to reverence nature, is just the ultimate.

Barking mad

The New Boy must think I am insane. Yesterday I announced to the office that I had been to the pound shop at lunchtime without considering that he might ask me what I had bought. Panicked, I ran through the list of items in my head, trying to decide what my newsworthy "bargain" might be - broken biscuits, jam jar labels, tampons, or two dog combs? I don't have one dog, let alone two, so I opted for giving him a glare instead. So much for my Cosmopolitan girl about town image!

The real bargain of the trip was the two dog combs. And before you also decide that I am barmy, allow me to explain. Dog combs are very similar to but smaller than hand carders and cost a thirtieth of the price. Hand carders are used to card wool to prepare it for spinning or for making felt. (And it could be worse, since I could be making one like this one, out of teasels!)

I am new to fibrecraft. I have made some felt from shop-bought roving, and I would dearly love to learn to spin. I have a huge bag of shaggy wool "fibre" (not at all the same thing as roving) that must be carded before it can be used - hence my excitement at finding the dog combs for a quid each. So, last night I spent a very relaxing evening in front of the TV combing my way through part of this bag of shaggy wool and I now have a little pile of bright green fuzz, ready to be made into felt.

Now, sitting here pretending to work, I wonder if the New Boy would risk asking me how I spent my evening? I had better prepare a normal sounding answer - one that doesn't make me sound barking mad.

The End of Cod

This article in the Times makes me want to throw my hands up in despair at the world. Only now are people realising what scientists have been saying for years - that cod stocks are collapsing. We've passed the point of no return and yet people are still talking in terms of possibilities.

This makes me so angry! Talk about linear thinking.

"The main problem is that although cod catches have been cut to 26,500 tonnes a year, more than twice that amount is being caught in bycatches by fishermen chasing other species such as haddock, whiting, hake and plaice. Fishermen accidentally caught about 50,000 tonnes of cod last year, and have to throw the dead fish back in the sea because it is classed as an illegal catch."

Has it not occurred to anyone to call the bycatch the catch, and just not go chasing the 26,500 tonnes of cod that are caught as a main catch each year? Quotas exist to protect fish stocks, but in this case they are trebling the number of cod caught and killed each year, and for no appreciable benefit to anybody. It is like buying three Mercedes and then driving two off a cliff because you only have space in your garage for one car. It is insane.

Don't they realise what they are doing?

Christmas is coming (or the eternal summer)

Christmas is coming and I am getting fat. Well, I would be, if I weren't dieting to avoid it happening - bah. I love this time of year. This is the time of year when my diet changes from the fresh fruit of summer to the rich foods of the autumn harvest and I get excited by the thought of dried fruit, nuts, seeds, meats. I think I should have been a pioneer. At the very least I should have lived in a time when seasonal eating was a way of life. I suppose that is any time before about 1900.

I'm fighting the urge to batten down the hatches. To eat for Britain and to curl up in front of the fire with a list of improving things to do. To sew, spin, weave, knit. I think I have missed the glut of preserving and drying of foods this year however, and have moved straight into eating them!

One of the side effects of living a life that honours the seasons is that when the season changes it hits you like a sledgehammer. This is only a problem when you can't adapt your life to fit. I'm still working on office time, so I have to function just the same as I did during summer. Or at least appear to. I think that is why I am fighting these seasonal changes within me. There is no point in putting on fat to last me through the lean part of winter because there is no lean part of winter anymore. There is no point in my preserving and drying foods to last through because foods are available fresh all year round. There is no point in sewing, spinning, weaving and knitting unless for pleasure because warm clothing can easily be bought more cheaply than my supplies. If I do these things is it because I choose to live this way, to honour the seasons and the rhythm of life.