The Secret Garden

Clawing back some dignity

So I have spent the evening clawing back some dignity after the lemonade debacle. I added citric acid in the end, which gave the stuff some bite, but it hasn't dissolved properly and so one bottle is going to be far more tangy than the other! Oh well. It was a lesson. It was my choice to continue with the post, even though it showed me in a bad light, because I think it is important not to take yourself too seriously. I'm no domestic goddess. I'm a human being in training. As someone very dear to me once said: "in this life we all die beginners".

It has been a trying evening (no, not the lemonade! I mean personal stuff, like being hounded out of every room by a manic flatmate) so I got the spinning wheel out. The wheel (should it have a name?) has been languishing in disuse for the last nine months, and I really don't know why. As soon as I got my foot on the treadle and some fleece in my hands, I relaxed. It's as if I were transported somewhere else, and my focus on the task was complete.

I've started spinning some lovely fleece. It's 17.9 micron Merino, which is as fine as Cashmere, and a monkey to get it to stay on the bobbin. It needs a lot of twist, and if I don't have my next rolag lined up and ready to go, I end up pulling off the entire length I have just spun as it comes apart in my hands as I thread it back through the orifice to attach the next bit. It's highly absorbing. I'm ending up with about a third of the fleece on the bobbin, a third as waste (claggy, twiggy, matted mess) and a third as noil. It's tempting to combine this last third of fluff with the carded fleece and roll it all up into a rolag, but when I do it comes back to bite me on the bum. The rolag disintegrates and I have to unreel the whole of the previous section piece by piece trying to get a strong join.

I hope this means I am learning a lot!

I'm learning that carding fleece isn't just about combing out the tangles, it is about separating the vegetable matter and the nubbly matted bits from the loose strands, and then further separating the short strands from the longer ones. I'm learning that a scrap of suede wrapped round my thigh saves wrecking yet another pair of jeans with the metal teeth of the carders!

I'm learning that the darker patches of fleece are the softest and the shortest staple, that the oatmeal bits are the nubbliest, and the white patches are the coarsest and the longest staple and spin beautifully into long, smooth singles. All of this is fun, and absorbing (it is worth saying that again and again) but what I am also learning - which is the most invaluable lesson to me - is how to relax. How to clear my mind, and to make the crap that is flying my way not stick.

It is going to take me a month of Sundays to fill the bobbin with this stuff, and with the tiny dog-comb carders I am using it takes an age to prepare enough fibre to spin for more than five minutes at a time, but I am oddly attracted to the task. I don't even have a project in mind for the yarn, but that doesn't matter. What matters to me right now is the process. Just like the lemonade, when life hands you a tangled, knotted mass of a problem the best thing to do is to grasp a handful and, little by little, straighten it out into something of value.

For the birds

Aww... how cool is this?

Spinners and knitters in the US are reminding each other this week that it is nesting time and they need to put out their fibre scraps for the birds. There's something lovely in the idea of providing a little wire feeder filled with silk and wool next to the boring old red peanuts.

I think I might try it with some of my scraps and then look for multicoloured nests in my neighbourhood next month!

Oh, and Mars is now in Cancer until May, so it seems an appropriate time all round to be nesting. Sweet.

Yarn porn!

Oh yes. Unadulterated woolly goodness.

The nostepinde was an unfinished wooden one that I stained and oiled as part of the general productivity binge. All of the rovings came from here. When I grow up I really want to be as good as Heike. She's incredible.

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.

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.

Happy B-earth-day to me...

I finally have something positive to write about - yay!

I have had an utterly amazing week. What seemed like it would be disastrous 10 days ago has turned into the most positive experience. Everyone made a fuss of me at work, my Group made a fuss of me in the evening, and my family and friends made a fuss of me at the weekend. My flatmate did a 5-day fuss marathon... I've spent the last five days being made to feel totally loved and cherished.

The fact that I can even think the word "cherished" means I have come a long way since last weekend.

I think part of the experience has been to embrace my element. I'm naturally a very down-to-earth sort of a person, so taking on Earth didn't seem like it would be such a challenge. But with Saturn moving into Virgo, and turning 30 and being single, suddenly it seemed like the weight of the world was on my shoulders and I was being buried by it. You can have too much of a good thing.

So now I have had a couple of weeks to ponder, I have reached the conclusion that there is far more to Earth than meets the eye. Yes, Earth represents hearth and home, but that doesn't have to mean that I spend my life there. I'm not chained to my spinning wheel. So instead of focussing on ways to keep me at home, I've focussed instead on ways of making myself a home to spend time in. I've started nesting. My presents from my family were all earthy, hearth presents. A salt pig for the kitchen, an olive wood pestle and mortar. I've wanted these things for a very long time, and yet something always held me back from having them.

So what has changed? I think/feel/sense that gradually I am becoming more "in the moment". I'm making a conscious effort to ask for what I want (in every sense) and not to delay having for some far off time when everything is going to be perfect and I will "deserve" what I receive. I think I am starting to learn to listen to my true will. And to question it. Everywhere I look the message is that I am supposed to experience joy in this lifetime, so that is what I will strive to do.

Work in progress

I realise it's been a while since I last posted. Ironically it's because I was waiting for something fun to post about. All the doom and gloom is getting me down. Where's my lust for life gone lately?

It could be the fact that in six days' time I turn 30... I've never been particularly concerned about things like that though, so why get worried about it now? Is 30 a bigger landmark than 25? On my 25th birthday I was about 30m under the sea, in a wetsuit, with a nitrogen induced fit of the giggles. Maybe ignoring a birthday is the way to go?

I think I just feel slightly out of the loop... my birthday plans have been described as "wonderfully tame and unspectacular"... do people expect something wild and exciting from me?

I used to think that I was the most boring and down to earth Virgo there ever was, but this week I seem to be considered Ms Life & Soul, at least at work anyway. Have I created a reputation that I should be living up to?

And how does being Ms Life & Soul sit with also being the woman that spends Friday night at home making felt? Am I more Ms Jack-it-in and Hide than the extrovert my colleagues think I am?

Tomorrow I am bunking the office summer party to take delivery of a spinning wheel... surely that is just perverse. Or is running away from the crowd the best way to stand out from it?

Maybe this will all integrate itself into a nicely rounded and amusing post some day, but for now I'm not sorted enough to dispense any words of wisdom. This next batch isn't "cooked" yet.

Belly button fluff

I really have descended into my navel lately. Looking back at my recent posts all I can see is my introspection.

What has been nice is that in amongst all the belly button fluff, I've discovered warm and fuzzy things that I want to share. My soapmaking is back on track for starters - I now have soap at every stage of the process sitting in my room waiting to be wrapped or hidden away curing. I've even started to design some new ones. There is still a very long way to go, but it feels like I'm back on track.

I'm having good dreams again, and I'm dreaming in my current context. In fact, I'm dreaming in wicca.

But the best bit (and the bit I most want to share) is that I have discovered a fantastic book. When I started to learn to spin at the end of last year, I knew that there was more to it than just fibrecraft. Exactly what, I didn't know, but I was open to letting the process unfold as it would. And it has. I'm learning about the spiritual, meditative side of spinning, and the value of something so simple as a spindle as a tool for emancipation. My emancipation.

"Thus, for instance, he wanted our people by hand-spinning to shake off inertia and a feeling of helplessness, and to learn to rely on themselves. ...Khadi, therefore, had for Gandhiji not merely economic significance, but also great cultural or psychological value. It was meant to put new life into the individual and make him resourceful and self-dependent. As such, it contained the seeds of the true Swaraj or self-rule, or democracy in the real sense of the term."

Spindle, my spindle

"Spindle, my spindle, haste, haste thee away,

and here to my house bring the wooer, I pray."

I have a new spindle. She's made of beautiful rosewood and perfect in every way. And she demands a name. I tried on a few while spinning fine silk on the train, but every name I suggested made the spindle drop to the floor. I found myself talking to her, singing to her, smoothing away her scratches with my fingers. Making promises.

All of this has surprised me, because I started spinning with no clue how it would fit into my Craft. I don't know any people in my immediate circle who spin, so there was noone to ask. As time has worn on I have reached my own conclusions, and now doing some research (albeit mainly online) I have found some intriguing things.

Like this:

"A common theme of spinning tales is the breaking of magical boundaries. Spinning women attract all kinds of supernatural creatures and spirits. The tale of Frau Holda is a prime example where the act of spinning causes a link between worlds."

The plot thickens.

Meanwhile this month I have been getting in touch with my inner Celt. For Imbolc I made a special soap dedicated to Bridget, called "Brigid's Fire". As is the way with such things the soap really named itself, demanding fiery orange swirls of annatto to contrast against a soft yellow ground, where I had planned a soft green and white. Bríde is someone who has become close to my heart, with her themes of purification, healing and creativity. Today I discovered that she is also a goddess of spinning.

Yarn porn!

At last I have a camera again. It's great. I've been indulging in a frenzy of photography, making up for all the time I've lost over the last couple of months.

If pictures of handspun yarn can be called porn, then this is the money shot. It's yarn I spun myself and knitted into a handwarmer...