Trampled by Geese is a reminder to myself to look at the positive side of life and to endeavour to only write about things that inspire me rather than focus on what is negative in the world. Kirkegaard once wrote, “Being trampled by geese is a slow way of dying, but being eaten to death by envy and greed is even slower and more painful”.
What unexpected yarn has fallen into your life? Do you have a go-to project you love to make with found yarn or do you wait to see what the yarn says it wants to be?
About a year ago, I stumbled on some free yarn, leftovers from the now closed local mill. Talking to people who used to work there, this was part of calibrating the spinning machine, so it contains a lot of different fibres from a variety of farms. Most of them are less than a day's journey away.
So I made a thing. And I made a video about the thing. And the yarn. And deep thoughts about the yarn, fibreshed, and my personal textile history.
Actually, there is a pretty good reason. I wanted to understand how circle cloaks work so I made some tiny mockups. And since the only thing I have that resembles a doll are these chickens...
The most frustrating thing about recovering is trying to find momentum. But I'm working on it, building a bit more each day. Finally got into a routine with making coffee and having an hour of craft time while listening to an audiobook or lo-fi girl each morning.
Mostly I'm working on my sewing, trying to make a block pattern. This is a map of my body that I can use to make my own sewing patterns. I need this because my body is now a massively different shape and it could open a huge world of possibilities to me - and save loads of money in that I don't need to buy new patterns each time I want to make something new.
13 years ago, I met one of you in a yarn shop. It was good. There was fibre and friend. A delightful combination. Like silk, angora, and merino
With that fibre, I wove my first, 100% handmade cloth (both spun and woven by me). It was a significant moment in my life - empowering.
This scarf started me on a path that I'm still travelling today.
Which brings us to today's video. Another landmark on this journey. An attempt to capture some of those feelings from that first scarf and weave them into today's life.
Not only is it a pivot from tutorials to storytelling, but it's also my first collaboration. A few youtube coconspirators and I decided to make videos about angora fibre in honour of Easter and Spring! The videos will show up here as they are published. I encourage you to check them out - there is some great info about angora from knitters, spinners, and other yarncrafters.
Alas, the only bunnies on the farm are wild and don't hang out much with the humans this time of year, I had to make do with Bunny Substitutes. I hope you enjoy.
This is something I wrote a long time ago to help someone going through a tough customer service situation.
It's not relevant to me right now, but I stumbled on it and wanted to put it somewhere I could find it if when I need it.
What do you do to give yourself the gift of time?
You know that situation. A message comes from a customer or friend or official or someone being wrong on the internet, or...? They are more frustrated than you would like. It gets you flustered in return. You want to hammer out a reply about all the ways you are right and they are wrong and... but you know that won't help. Answering in the heat of the moment only escalates the problem.
What is the thing you do for yourself to create distance from that frustration?
For me, I hammer out the reply, then save it. Not send. Save. Then I put the kettle on.
While the kettle is heating up, I allow myself to brood about the problem. If it is a big problem, I fill the kettle all the way so I have ample brooding time. But the moment the water boils and I pour the tea, I force myself to think and do unrelated things - usually crafting.
Sometimes one cuppa tea is enough. Sometimes I need several. Some problems need sleeping on and I put them aside until the next morning with a quick note to the customer about how I hear their problem and am looking into it. I will get back to them in 24 hours.
Quite often, that reply I wrote in the heat of the moment gets binned. It was not helpful. After tea, I can write something actually useful towards claiming and fixing the situation.
Giving myself, and my customer/friend/official/internet idiot, the gift of time has been one of the most helpful tools in defusing difficult situations.
What's your go-to solution for getting distance from a tricky situation?
There is so much science about it - and as much as I love geeking out and learning the details, I also get lost in them.
What if I do it wrong? What if it's ugly? What if...
A few months ago, I was putting my garden to bed for the winter and I was thinking about this list of what if's, probably because I was digging up some madder roots for a new garden because I love the colours madder makes and you can never have too much.
I put aside about a third of the madder root for drying and dyeing at some later date. Because one day I'll know enough to be able to use it. I've never seen instructions for dyeing with fresh root before. Maybe it's not possible. Someone would have told me if it was.
Then I started to get angry at myself. Why don't I just do it? It's only yarn. I've got nearly 5 kilometres of handspun yarn ready for just this sort of harvest. It's not like I need a specific colour, all I want are pretty reds. What keeps stopping me from dyeing?
The answer, I'm sad to say, is me.
So I designed an experiment based on what I know about madder. Scared that I might destroy all that handspun yarn, but excited too that I could finally do this thing.
It's so pretty!
PS, don't miss out on the easter eggs at the end of the video.
Nearly 12 months later, I find out what is going to heal on its own, would have by now.
I'm not good at accepting that.
But there are some therapies that are show promise. Believe it or not, the health system pays for me to go to mindfulness classes. As if this is the glue that will help pull the pieces back together.
I'm beginning to realize, even if I could find all the little missing shards, it won't be what it was before.
Not the same.
But it's a really cute mug... I mean, it's the only life I have.
So what do I do?
I look at what remains. Find something to fill in the gaps. Hope.
Most of all, I repurpose.
They say it will help, but mindfulness, especially the guided stuff, bores the pants off me.
And yet, it meshes so well with my learning of photography and videography. The camera sees what's actually there. To capture the moment, we too need to see that moment. To be attentive, not with judgement, but with a curiosity of everything the camera sees and hears - and what it doesn't.
So maybe my instinct to make up for what I have lost from the written world by learning new visual skills, is a way of healing?
But also there is grief. But that's part of healing too.
This mug was a Christmas gift. Part of a set and all the others arrived with loving perfection except this poor shattered Dalek. I looked into different ways to repair him, and although I would love to one day try Kintsugi (金継ぎ) which is a repair with lacquer and gold and I'm told does such a good job the mug is 100% useable again. I couldn't find a traditional kit (most modern ones use chemicals that aren't food safe or heat resistant enough for tea) in my price range. Maybe one day.
There are things you know you know, things you know you don't know, and even things you don't know you know. But it's the things you don't know that you don't know that will get you in the end. -paraphrased from some politician I can't remember.
I've been working with spinning wheels for nearly 20 years. Repairing, assembling, using, spinning, buying and selling, teaching, technical support, writing, researching, and other adventures. I know a lot about spinning wheels.
Or at least I thought I did.
What I didn't know is how much you can learn by building a spinning wheel out of gingerbread.
That's right, gingerbread.
Gingerbread must be the most unforgiving substance to build from ever! Rigid when you don't want it, crumbling at the wrong moments. Even making the parts thicker doesn't guarantee strength. But rather, understanding the forces at work and the stress points is key to successfully building something out of this crazy material.
I learnt more in two days of failure and one wheel-shaped object than I ever knew I didn't know.
My first attempt was not as awesome as the image in my head. Actually, it has no resemblance to the image in my head at all.
But I kind of think I might try again next year and see if I can do better.
If you want to build or repair spinning wheels, and you want to do it well, build one out of gingerbread. You will learn more than you ever knew you didn't know.
It is entirely possible I made this entire video so I could reference 3 seconds of a Dr Who episode.
I've been wanting a sewing bird since long before I knew how to sew. I'm frugal with my spending and antiques are far too expensive. The brass reproductions are pricy enough. But I put a price watch (camelcamelcamel.com is great for this) on my dream bird with the expectation it would never drop that low. But it did.
The sewing bird is designed to solve a major problem with hand stitching - back and hand pain. It is supposed to give more control of the needle and fabric. And having tools that inspire makes it easier to avoid procrastination.
Before I spent money on it, I decided to try an experiment. Could I make a tool that would do the job with random things found around the house?
SPOILER: Yes. Yes, I can.
So here you go. My adventures hand stitching, making a mocking bird, and finding out if a reproduction Sewing bird really works.
I hope you enjoy it.
There are a lot of things I could do better, I know. But this video marks yet another big step towards making the videos I want to make for you. There is a lot more focus on storytelling as well as - what I hope is - informative and useful information.
If you like this sort of thing and want to see more of it, here are some things you can do to support me on my creative journey.
Given how bad my arthritis is getting, I would think I would give up sewing by hand, but I find I do it more and more. My sewing machine is actually tucked away for a while but I'm still working on a few projects like a sleep shirt and new skirt.
I've been thinking about why I hand sew so much these days.
It's not because it's fast. It's not because it's easy. It's certainly not because it's painless. I'm not very good at it and my stitches are still uneven.
These are also the factors that keep me coming back.
Arthritis - the doctors say keep moving those hands as therapy.
Easy/not good at it - I love learning and perfecting new skills.
Slow - that's a bonus. I took a mindfulness class about the same time I started sewing by hand and I found out a lot of the things we learned in that class are easily applied to hand sewing (And making tea, and lots of other things). But I find I like the slower pace as it increases the value of the finished item in my mind. It encourages me to maintain and repair it for a longer life.
Sometimes I think maybe it isn't as slow. I spend a few moments here and a few moments before bed and before I know it the top is finished. Whereas with the sewing machine, I need dedicated time and I can't always find that in my day.
Sustainability/preparation - something I can do if I ever lose my sewing machine or other adverse events happen.
And portability. It's nice to have something to do in those empty moments while out and about somewhere.
If you like this sort of thing and want to see more of it, here are some things you can do to support me on my creative journey.
I've always been a bit time blind, but lately, it's gotten a lot worse. I've been musing on what to do about that.
Many years ago, I had a job where we had to be on time within 10 seconds of the schedule. We had all the responsibility for making certain everything was on time and absolutely no control over the factors that caused things to be late. That kind of disconnect is demoralizing.
Not long after leaving that job, I stopped wearing a watch.
Now that I live on the farm, wearing a watch on my wrist is a fast way to destroy a watch.
Besides, the chickens don't care what fiction the watch tells us. The day begins as it gets light, and ends as it darkens. That means in the summer, my day ends at about 11pm and on Christmas Day it very seldom lasts beyond half-past two in the afternoon.
It happened there was a doctors appointment the day after Daylight Savings ended. And of course, the confusion;
"I thought you changed that clock."
"No, I thought you... any idea what the actual time is?"
Yep. The same old conversation.
I've been thinking of wearing a watch again. But a wristwatch is out. I'm resisting getting one of those smartphones. That leaves a fob watch (pocket watch).
I dug out my old fobwatch which is a cheap mechanical watch in a lovely umeboshi case that never kept the time. Now I remember I took it apart at the start of the year to find out why it was broken and if I could move noon to the 9 Oclock position. I figured out how it was broken, but I didn't have the skills to make it unbroken... and I ended up making it much worse.
My first choice would be to fix this watch. I really like this case, but I haven't been able to find replacement watch guts for it. I wish the only horologist wasn't all the way downtown as I only go there once every five years to get my drivers' licence renewed.
The second choice is to find a new mechanical (one I wind up every day as batteries only last a couple of weeks on me) watch I can love. I haven't found one in my price range yet. I will just have to wait until the time is right.
But there's also the issue of pockets.
Perhaps if I add watch pockets to all of my skirts, by the time I finish, the perfect watch will appear?
To that end, I found this awesome video on historical methods of putting watch pockets on skirts!
It's given me some good ideas I want to try.
I really like the information in her videos. The sound is a bit difficult, but the captions help.
If you like this sort of thing and want to see more of it, here are some things you can do to support me on my creative journey.
Why am I hitting fluff with sticks? Read on my friends, it's fun.
You know how you read or watch a nifty thing and you think you have the skills to do it. You just never take that final step to trying the new thing. Maybe you aren't confident you will do it right? Maybe you let yourself get stuck on the tiniest detail (how long should my whippy willow rods be - I need specific numbers people! How many inches? No one will tell me, never mind, I now have a good excuse to return to my comfort zone.)
My friend Brenda took away my excuse not to try this nifty thing. During the Virtual Sheep to Shawl, she set up a willowing station. It was so much fun, why wait so long to try this?
So I did what I do, and I took my new skill home and pushed it to the limits to find out what it can and cannot accomplish. While exploring this skill, I discovered that there aren't many resources for it on the internet, so I made a video.
The problem is, it's not the kind of video easily done within my comfort zone.
My preference is to have as little as me as possible in the film, be it visual or voice. I'm not that interesting, why would anyone want to waste their time listening to me... or so the voices in my head tell me.
But this is more limiting than liberating. I have a list (currently 5 pages long) of videos I want to make for you, but I don't want to make half-ass videos. Each video I make, I want it to build my skills and to provide something useful to the world. I have a lot to say on many topics and doing it silently wouldn't do it justice.
I'm not sure if I'm saying this clearly.
But learning the skills I need to make better videos is like flogging myself with whippy willow rods.
This video passes a huge milestone in my journey. I cannot say how much courage it took, because I suspect for most people, this act would take no courage at all.
Put simply, I do a lot of talking. A voiceover for the whole video describing with a touch of storytelling in hopes of making a technical tutorial interesting.
Emotionally and physically this is exhausting. But I did it. I published it. No one yet has noticed (or at least mentioned) the mistakes I made with my speech impediment (mid-Atlantic accent mishmash that let a few regional flaws slip through)
These videos take longer to make, so I'll probably be alternating between longer with talking and shorter something silly videos for a while. At least until I get into my grove.
But it's a lot like willowing - a lot of fun and I don't know what took me so long to try it.
If you like this sort of thing and want to see more of it, here are some things you can do to support me on my creative journey.
Of course, the question is asked - that is always asked whenever we talk about raising silkworms. A very important question and one I've done a lot of soul searching about. I've read a lot. I've asked a lot of questions from people on all sides of the discussion. I've asked questions of people who at first glance have nothing to do with silk and sericulture (growing silk) but turn out to be extremely relevant to the conversation.
Warning! This is going to be one of those difficult conversations. THERE IS NO RIGHT ANSWER here. Each person is going to need to make their own choices and if somehow this blog entry gets more than four readers, I'm going to remind you that I moderate the comment box. Comments on all sides of the discussion are encouraged. Comments that accuse, boss, tell others how they should live their life, or are phrased in a not nice way (all subjectively judged by me), will likely vanish without further warning.
And to make certain you really want to read this, I'm putting a "read more" button beneath this pretty picture.
I don't know if it's just me, but I find fabric shopping one of the most frustrating things in my life.
That and washing the dishes.
I know enough about sewing to put together clothes. I know enough about fabric to weave it. But I don't know enough about either to put the two things together. If I did, I would probably buy my fabric online so there could be more money left over for more fabric buying. The thing is, I don't even know where to start, so there's a lot of trial and error going on.
This week I went to the Big-Box-Fabric store (not the real name) and under the glaring lights, I try to find something that isn't made for quilting or made from a petrochemical. I like natural fibres. It's probably not the best place to look for this, but it's nearest to where I was going that day.
Perhaps some cotton twill fabric, like jeans, would make a nice winter skirt. But wow, that's expensive. So I settled on some wool-cotton blend that was almost half the price for some reason. The occasional kemp hair in the fabric might have something to do with it - it's that kind of thing that gives wool a bad name, so scratchy!
Isn't it pretty?
The red cloth is a lightweight cotton sheet I got at the Salvation Army. Organic cotton next to the skin - very happy!
flat felling seams by hand - not an arthritus friendly activity
I'm not happy about the washing instructions on the wool blend (dry clean only isn't in my vocabulary), so I ignored them and ran the yardage through the washing machine on a gentle cycle last night. It came out okay. No obvious shrinking or puckering. Mostly cotton and already well fulled, that's what I expected. Although next time I should do a sample first.
Time to try a new technique I saw on Bernadette Banner's videos (she's the skinny one with the happy voice that does a lot of Victorian and Edwardian sewing - and my hero).
Bernadette calls it 'flatlining' which seems to be to sew the lining and the outer layer together as if they are one cloth. That doesn't seem to hard, although I wish I could find more tutorials on why and when and how to do this. Perhaps it has a new name?
Or perhaps people don't do this anymore?
Since I'm not matching patterns, I should be able to get two skirts out of this. I don't know if I'll have enough left over for this project. It's probably better if I don't.
Hoping to get at least two warm skirts for this fall. Not sure how well this will work for farming, so I need to keep looking out for another easy to wash cotton twill or the like. Does anyone know an affordable (preferably Canadian so I don't have to pay customs) source for this kind of cloth?
ps. Sorry about the poor lighting in the photo. It's winter and the sun probably won't be showing herself much until spring. I need to get my winter lights up into the workroom.
If you like this sort of thing and want to see more of it, here are some things you can do to support me on my creative journey.
Today is one of the days I can pre-vote in our national election; I just hope everyone else doesn't have the same idea. Usually, these early polling stations are quiet and calm. No crowds. Just go, vote, and go away.
I like doing things ahead of time like writing this blog post over a week before it goes live or trying to stay ahead with my youtube videos. (I can't wait 'till you see the one with the apple - cute chicken awaits you at the end)
The weather is finally starting to cool down, just enough to get outside and do things. Although we had late rains in the spring, there is less groundwater and with the intense heat earlier in the year, making this summer on the dry side of normal (but not actually a drought where I live because drought is 'less than normal' and when normal is zero... we can't technically get drought in the summer here). Just about everything in the garden suffered but we got some great fruit harvests. I've been careful with the water and the well has yet to run dry this year (knock on wood).
The trick to the well is not just using less, but spacing out the water use so that the well has time to recover. I find using too little water seems to increase the time it takes for the well to refill. I think it gets clogged up with sand or something.
A big part of what we do here is re-using water. Laundry is a great way to do this. Last year I got my wringer washer out of storage and put it in the garden for my weekly wash. It is so much fun to use and the plants love the rinse water!
This year, I've been washing things by hand as they get dirty, one or two items per day. It turns out this method uses less water, but it does require being home each day and more physical effort than having a machine do it for me. Both are great options.
There is something about washing clothing outside that transforms it from a chore into a meditation. Mindfulness in laundry.
A lot of this year has been about mindfulness and slowing down. Accepting that I can't do what I used to be able to even a year ago. Learning what new things I can do that I couldn't before.
Being aware of the growing things. Observing how the plants grow, or fail to, when the weather is unfriendly.
And planning in advance. There's a lot of loss with this year's heat and drought, but it is also the time to plan "how can I work with nature to get more trees to grow and make a more sustainable garden?".
Farming is about observing the now. Remembering the past - both good and bad. And doing it in advance to make tomorrow better than today.
If you like this sort of thing and want to see more of it, here are some things you can do to support me on my creative journey.
