Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
Post #3316: On the loom again
I completed a piece of weaving this week, for the first time in about a year. It’s not that I haven’t had anything on one of my looms – I do have some tea towels I put on the smaller Julia loom ages ago. But the warp went on poorly, making it an inconsistent and frustrating weave, so the towels are as yet, undone. The larger Berga loom seemed daunting to me, and until recently was being used as a repository for other projects (the loom bench makes a great resting place, the upper rails are too convenient to hang things from).
But in a flurry of “I can do this”, I agreed to weave a piece of material for a waulking workshop later this spring – and for that I needed to weave a sample using materials from my stash.A sample serves to orient me to the kind of fabric I might want to make, and in this instance, I needed to ensure I could get myself through all the steps of the warping and weaving process on the big loom again.
The good news is that I still know how to design, calculate, warp, and weave a piece of cloth! Not only did the warp go on without *any* problems (a small miracle), but it was a lot of fun to weave – using some of my favourite colours, and switching up the twill weave pattern throughout. Using a heavier weight yarn for this helped to make it a fairly quick project, easy to thread and satisfyingly fast to weave off – 2 weeks start to finish – about 15 hours in total.
As much as I like the texture and pattern of this fabric, for the final piece, I’ll end up doing a plain weave instead of a twill. I would like to be able to turn the finished cloth into shawls and cowls to sell as a fundraiser, and the twill at this yarn weight is just a bit too dense for that. I’m also going to weave something in lighter, springier colours in keeping with the time of year we are doing the workshop. This is why we sample!
I will have to order more yarn for the piece I want to weave, and that’s going to cost some money. So in the meantime, I’m warping the loom again to weave a meditation shawl. You can see that warp in the header photo on this post – it’s comprised of a fine weight alpaca yarn in silver, which will be woven off using black merino wool of a similar weight. Both of these luxury yarns have been in my stash for a number of years, so it feels like a free project!
In the end, it will likely look a bit plain compared to this week’s plaid—a simple grey-and-black weave—but it will serve me well in the Zen meditation hall, where dark, unpatterned garments are the norm.
I’m in the process of threading right now, at 16 ends per inch/28 inches wide, that 448 ends that have to pass through the heddles and sleyed into the reed before the warp can be tied up. Though this is somewhat time consuming, I don’t mind threading and sleying — it has a certain mindfulness quality to it, and if the warp is properly organized, it goes smoothly. (For the weavers in the crowd: every since I started using the AVL warping wheel on my sectional beam – my warps are always properly organized.)
Slow going, but very satisfying. And getting some cloth off the loom this week reminded. me of the magic that is turning string into cloth. String into Cloth!
I’m back at it now, another 224 ends to thread and then I can get the beater bar back on the loom and pass all the strings through the reed. By the end of this weekend, I should have a warp to start weaving!
Post #3315: Inner wisdom
I am in an actively transitional place in my life, though still not quite ready to share what that means publicly. In the meantime, my dreams and tarot readings have taken on a surprising weight, full of direction and meaning.
Last night I dreamed that I was seeking to renovate a house – a whitewashed, stone, Victoria-style workhouse – to be my home. Situated in something that looked like the land I grew up on, the house existed in between the interior homes of the very wealthy, and the exterior shacks and tents of poor, drug-using people. My quest in the dream was to find out who could give me permission to fix up the house – to go door to door and find out who owned it. I moved easily among these extremes, at home in both, and undaunted.
My reading of the dream is that it speaks to transition and to living between worlds—doing the work to establish myself, and actively making a home in territory that is both known and unknown.
My tarot reading today echoes this, and honestly, I was a bit spooked (moved?) at how deeply it spoke to this exact resonance when I turned the cards over.
The reading felt like a map for the liminal space I find myself in. The Hermit representing inward focus and quiet resolve; the Six of Pentacles and Page of Cups reminding me that I’ve learned to balance strength with tenderness; the Page of Wands revealing a hidden spark of excitement beneath the seriousness; and Death, in the position of direction, speaks to shedding an old skin and crossing into a new identity. The Knight of Pentacles offers guidance in how to move—steadily, patiently, one step at a time—while The Sun, as blessing, promises vitality, confidence, and a sense of rightness in inhabiting my own body (this card has shown up in all of my last three readings so I’m taking this to heart). Taken together, this spread suggests a calm and well-lit passage and gives some rather clear direction: gather yourself, let something end, keep going, and allow this moment to change how you see yourself.
Afterwards, I lit the candle on a small altar I made in my window a few weeks ago with the intention that I move forward with wisdom (owl feather), protection (rose quartz), beauty (the butterfly), and without delay (“delay not, swift the flight of fortune’s greatest favours”).
I know, it’s all a little bit woo—but in these times of flux, both personal and global—I am leaning on all the meditation and magic practices at my disposal. Of all moments we should be deeply listening to the world and our higher selves, it is right now.
Post #3314: The things that make up a life
(Photo: Seaweed on a foggy day.)
Yesterday, I stepped out for a walk in the deep fog and ran into my neighbour, who told me I’m the talk of the seniors’ centre at the moment. Why? Because I’m playing my fiddle at their monthly lunch this Thursday—an afternoon of live music followed by a soup social.
I agreed to this gig months ago, an easy yes to come and play half an hour of music and then share a meal with folks in my community. After that, I have to go on to our local trust committee meeting to make the case for the inclusion of a green burial cemetery in our community planning process. I took the day off work to do both of these things.
There is a lot going on here day-to-day. A friend is coming next week to stay for a period of songwriting residency, I’m taking weekly fiddle lessons for the first time since I was a kid, we are planning a spring party for the 80th birthday of my father-in-law. I’ve got board meetings and shows and craft socials all piling up over the next little while. And then there is work, with the intensity of knowing that I will wrap it all up before the year is out.
But I’ve also managed to book myself five or six days of silent retreat at a hermitage on another island in early March, and I’m giving myself the space for meditation every morning before the hum begins. Here is where I find the foundation for the things that make up my life, the footholds that show me the way forward.
It’s all very small in the face of the cataclysmic world state, but what else can we do right now but build our communities, our kindnesses and our resilience? All of this is preparation for whatever comings knocking on our doors next.
Post #3313: A rainy day
This photo is proof that we have not had a frost at our place yet this winter. Even weirder than a hydrangea with colour on it in January, is the fact that the old potato patch has sent up their green tops where we missed digging out a couple of potatoes. To say it’s been a warm winter thus far would be an understatement. It’s been wet as hell, but it has not dipped below zero once where I live.
Of course, being still winter, that could change sooner rather than later. Last year we had a similar pattern, only for 2 feet of snow to show up after the turn of the year. It’s not unusual to get a long autumn-wet pattern, with a very short actual winter here.
I’ve returned to work after a 2 week break, and it occurs to me that when I’m not working for money – I spend almost no time at all in front of a computer monitor. I definitely use my phone (too much) and occasionally break out the laptop to write – but this sitting at a machine 8 hours a day is entirely unnatural to how I spend my time when not forced to sit in once place all day long. I am restless and unsatisfied. I want to take my laptop to the coffeeshop and work there instead. Or even better, get back to the books I started reading over the holidays that are beckoning to me now. Finish sewing the pants I started last summer? Tidy up my studio? Clean out the hallway closet? All of these things seem like a better use of my time than the spreadsheet in front of me.
I feel like these next ten months is going to be a continual comparison of what I could be doing instead of working, of what I will be doing when I finally finish working this desk job for good. I’m not a very good example of living in the present that way, and I’ll need to get more focused if I’m going to get everything achieved that I want to before I’m done.
Post #3312: January field notes
This post is the text from the Gabriola Island Field School email I sent out for the month of January. In the Field School year we started in March, and will end on the Spring Equinox.
As this week unfolds, I’ve been noticing that I’m not quite ready to return to the world post-holidays.
Not in a dramatic sense, of course. Nothing is wrong beyond the lingering cold and cough I picked up from my father-in-law. But I’m just not enjoying the increase in pace of the last few days. The calendar has flipped. I have early-new-year commitments. I spent this morning dealing with emails and banking. On Monday, my work routine will firmly reassert itself.
And I just don’t want to.
You know? I don’t want to give up the later mornings curled up in bed reading. I don’t want to force myself back into meetings and deadlines. I don’t want to give up the flexibility of my days to a full-time schedule again.
Part of what’s contributing to this feeling is very practical: January is already over-scheduled, even though I intended it to be a month of rest practice. Looking at what I’ve signed myself up for, I can see a mismatch between my actual intentions for this new year and the commitments I’m carrying forward. What I thought I was stepping into, and what I’ve arranged for myself, aren’t quite the same thing.
Last year, my guiding intention was to say yes more often—to stretch myself and take up more space as an organizer, facilitator, and visible participant in the work I care about. That “yes” year asked me to move outward toward people, projects, responsibilities, and leadership. In many ways, it was exactly the right thing at the right time. Beginning HRT, and the confidence boost that came with it, gave me greater capacity to explore my edges, my willingness to be seen, and my hands-on skills with people. It was a year of workshops and gatherings, of leading projects both in community and in my workplace.
But heading into this year—one that is likely to include retirement and a rethinking of what work means for me—things feel quite different. What I’m longing for now is something less overt and more inward: a shift in attention. I find myself returning to a regular meditation practice, seeking more spaciousness in my days, and trying to create room for emergence as I orient towards a new branch on my path.
And yet here I am, still moving as if last year’s intentions are the ones that apply. Still saying yes from a familiar place. Still operating out of habit-self, rather than pausing to examine my current time, energy, and headspace.
I suspect I’m not alone in this.
Do you notice this in your own life? That lag between the person you used to be and the one you’re becoming? How easy it is to keep acting out of muscle memory, even after a conscious decision to shift? Sometimes it takes longer than we expect for our outer commitments to catch up with our inner needs—for our lives to realign with who we are now.
This isn’t the first time I’ve encountered this kind of mismatch, and I’m fortunate to have developed tools that help me notice when it happens. Mindful practice. Regular forward planning. Working with my inner beings to renegotiate what my core self is allowed to become (therapy-speak for reconciling and integrating one’s needs).
For me, this feels like a very January practice. noticing and asking the questions:
What wants my attention now?
What no longer fits?
What do I choose to release in order to let new things emerge?
This month’s reflection is more personal and less overtly “Field School” than usual, though it may be entirely in keeping with the slowly returning light after the solstice. I hope you receive it as an invitation: to turn toward the version of yourself that is still catching up, and to ask what you need to carry into this new year to help that self come into being.
Red Cedar 