Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
Post #3318: Un-thawing for spring
Between the flu, dental surgery, and another cold – the last month has been a bit much for me. I’m finally feeling energetically here, and I plan to return to my gym routine this weekend – I’m feeling stiff and like every part of me needs to come back online slowly over the next little while. It’s very in keeping with the oncoming spring here.
Despite all of that, I have been weaving a lot and also tending to my studio. A power outage this week gave me a day off work in which I got some more studio organizing done, and also prompted me to get serious about putting a small woodstove in there. After ten years in which we’ve had regular outages (some for as many as 5 days), I’ve decided it’s time to put an alternate heat source in the studio so I can work there without freezing when there is no electric source. I also like the idea of using wood heat up there more often as in the winter months I find it hard to keep warm with the small electric wall heater. I will share some photographs of that project at it progresses, but at the moment I’m working on downsizing some materials and moving furniture to create the space for the stove to go.
In other life news, the budget implementation bill (C-15) received royal assent yesterday – this contains the provisions that will allow me to retire early. If everything goes as I’ve envisioned, I will retire in seven months. I still have to be approved for the program once it opens next week – so it’s not a done deal yet, but another hurdle out of the way. And honestly, it can’t come soon enough – work has been a real drag lately for a number of reasons (not the least of which I have no patience for another project gone off the rails because of a total disregard for my advice).
The next little while is going to be busy with visitors, family commitments, and workshops that I’m giving in April (one on Advance Care Planning, and one on Japanese Bookbinding). In May I have three separate trips to Vancouver planned for different things, not to mention three house concerts at Birdsong.
I’m hoping that despite the busyness I can find time for sewing some new wardrobe items – I’m really feeling the need for new clothes right now. I would also like to push my weaving a little and am thinking about creating and entering a piece or two for sale in a juried show here in May. That would mean getting to the end of my current sample warp this weekend, and getting something else on the loom on Monday/Tuesday of next week (chop chop!)
Also, today is day 34 of the 100 day project, and I have been faithful to my goal of doing something weaving-related every day since February 22nd! I am a third of the way through and honestly it has been an excellent exercise in focus – something I really needed to get back to weaving (which I had forgotten how much I like – it had started to seem impossible).
Clearly I am channelling all the popping up energy of the season, and am going to get moving outside of my studio again soon!
Post #3317: Moving slowly
For the last ten days or so, I’ve had the most terrible flu which I can only liken to a combination of strep throat, norovirus, and bronchitis. I was off work all last week, and as of today (Monday), I am still not back at it. Although my acute symptoms have passed, I am left with an exhaustion and brain fog that make doing my job next to impossible, never mind the fact I can’t sit up for more than an hour without needing to take a rest on the couch again. I am grateful for a large bank of sick leave, and the fact I’m at the point in my career where I do not feel the need to prove myself to anyone by showing up in shambles as I did when I was younger (I shudder to think of all the illnesses I spread in the office in those days, but it was the way back then).
Fortunately, I’m now just well enough to make a few slow attempts in the studio. Yesterday, between stretches on the couch listening to podcasts and watching Netflix, I returned to the loom I’d been working on a week ago. In fact, the day I finished warping it—last Monday—I was already feeling unwell: achy and tired. As I worked to balance it for weaving (a process I think of as tuning the loom), a fever came on hard. I had to abandon it entirely, take to bed, and I didn’t really get up again for the next five days.
But yesterday afternoon, I felt the energy to return to it – and so I put the pins into the jacks and went through the balancing process piece by piece until it was done and I had a clean shed on my warp. From start to finish, this took less than an hour. I then started weaving my shawl, and made some headway before exhaustion overtook me and I had to lie down on the couch in my studio. Later in the evening, I got some more weaving done, and the meditation shawl is on its way to being woven (plus, it looks like there will be some extra fabric which I will turn into a cowl or some other yummy thing).
As is somewhat obvious from my last couple of posts, I’ve been bitten by the weaving bug again after a long absence from the loom. This coincides with the annual start of the #100dayproject, which I think could give me the structure for a bit of a deep dive over the next little bit. And so I’ve set up a page here to track my goal and outputs for the hundred days – my plan being to do something weaving-related every day, no matter how small. It could be a bit or reading or researching drafts, colouring sketches for projects, designing a new weaving draft, or sitting down at the loom to get some yardage in. Anything that furthers my goal of becoming more proficient as a weaver and designing textile projects.
While I’m still sick, I don’t expect any big leaps in progress on my projects, but I’m making a list of all the things I do want to explore over the next hundred days, starting with some finishing techniques on the piece of fabric in the photo at the head of this post. When it’s finished, it will go into my samples catalogue – something I use for planning future projects, and also sharing with others interested in learning more about weaving. After that, the shawl will come off the loom and I’ll have to figure out what goes on next according to both interest and overall energy.
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.
Red Cedar 