I haven’t posted here for a while but I’m on holidays so I’ve got a bit of time, more time than I’m used to these days. And it has occurred to me, with all this time off, that I’m not really good at taking a break. Here I am at the cabin, without a lot to do, and I find myself agitated instead of relaxed. And I don’t mean a little bit agitated. I mean the kind of agitated where I’m having trouble sleeping and I can’t sit still even though I don’t have anything to do. When I do sit down for a few minutes I feel guilty about sitting without getting up and doing things that I feel a bit paralyzed from it. Which I suppose is how I get so much done in a day normally, and what I’m valued for.

But here’s the thing, my meditation path is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I often find myself giving instruction and advice about how just sitting can save our lives, I really believe this to be true. But at the same time I can’t just sit. I am doing all the time. Even when I am meditating, and I am sitting for an hour a day here, I am doing something. I am meditating. I track my meditations in an app, I work to increase the length of my sit, I practice with techniques I hope will change my life. I am vigorous in my study even as I recognize this is the antithesis of the zen path.Which is not to say that Zen equals doing nothing but it does require that one occasionally step back and allow things to rise without acting on them.

These days my life is all about acting on things. I became the president of my union local in February, my current job is demanding and people rely on me every day for advice, I am often at home on Gabriola alone and so I have to make sure that everything is running smoothly without Brian’s help. 

While I definitely feel that in some ways moving to the island has freed up more time and space, it has also has created the sense that I must always respond and prove I’m available even though I’m no longer in the city. For the first time ever in my working life I gave coworkers my private email case there is an emergency while I am away, and just days into my holiday I have already received three emails to it. What that does do is make sure I don’t check my work email but I don’t take it as a great sign that I’m holding on so tightly to my sense of self importance. I’ve always poked fun at the people who could not put down their BlackBerries at night, but I recently became one of those people. 

This vacation at the cabin is illuminating that fact, and I’m aware that I have more than another decade of working life to go and if I keep up the delusion of being all things to all people I am going to burn out before I get to retirement. So it’s something to think about, to let go of, so I can find days where doing nothing is ok.

One year in and things here have their routines: Tuesdays are farm day now, the day when I pick up flowers from the flower farm, go to the meat store at the farm up the road (it’s an honour system store where you write down and pay for what you take), and pick up my veggie csa box. Up above you can see that for $20 a week I get a mighty load of flowers. Same goes for the veggie box – and so I come home from my drive around loaded with most of my groceries for another week. We don’t have a dairy on the island, so I get that and imported veggies from the grocery – as well as any prepared goods…. but as I purchase all my dry goods in bulk through an organic buyers group, I’m finding the grocery visits are less now that growing season is here.

As I’ve not been posting much, I thought I would take a moment to recap all the textile things which I’ve worked on or finished in the last few weeks – as my daily routine involves a healthy amount of studio time these days, and on sunny days I’ve been sitting on my deck with some hand work. I realize as I post this that pretty much everything I am showing you will be given away – a pleasing thought of time well spent while I learn and learn some more.

But first of all I will show off the gift to myself purchased 18 months ago and now finished and ready to weave on — Alice!

You might remember this purchase from around my birthday in 2016. I’ve written about her a couple of times, in particular I detailed restoration efforts here. After not working on this much over the last few months, I buckled down a couple of days ago and finished waxing the last shaft bars, putting heddles on them, and putting new cord onto the brake mechanism. Which means that she’s pretty much ready to weave on whenever I get a warp on and put ties on the treadles for the bottom shafts to attach to. I’m a bit nervous about this, as a countermarch loom is quite a different beast from anything I’ve worked on today. On the other hand, this last week I realized how this loom expands – and that it could easily be an 8 or 12 shaft loom with some additional wooden jacks, shaft bars, and treadles – so *if* I can get it to go, it could end up being all the loom I ever need. My dad has offered to turn any wood pieces that I need and it appears easy to remove jacks and treadles to use as templates for new ones. (For those who don’t weave – more shafts = more complex pattern capabilities.)

So while waiting on that loom, I’ve been weaving on Little-J for the last few weeks  – a loom that initially I was skeptical of but have come to understand much better and appreciate for its simplicity. I’ve also realized that many of the problems I’ve had with the loom are due to my own lack of knowledge – I tied up incorrectly when I got it, and that’s created some abrasion on the texsolv cords (causing breakage), and I have been forgetting to separate heddles on both sides of the loom to create more balance in the shafts. Also, I don’t think this loom is really good for more than six yards of fabric at a time as it’s not big enough.

For the most part I’ve got it figured out now, though I still need to re-tie some cord. In any case I’ve just finished the fabric for six tea towels in two colours – the purple view is shown below with a strip of the dark blue. The weft is three gradating colours (violet, grey, beige):

I still need to hem the ends of the towels for a finish – but that is a short bit of work and I’ve got three new sets of towels – two to give away, and one for our house. Now I’ve got a silk and wool scarf on the loom, in colours that I love but cannot wear (green makes me look sickly) – so this is definitely going to be a gift:

This yarn is beautifully soft but I’ve encountered something that I hadn’t yet experienced – because of the slipperiness of the yarn, there is no grip and so if I’m not careful the weave pattern gets lost if I beat it too hard (it packs right down and you can’t see a pattern at all). On the other hand, it’s fingering weight which means it is going much faster than a tea towel – so I should have this off the loom in a few days time – and then I’ll probably put more tea towels on since I’ve got some visiting later this summer and those make good gifts.

In knitting news I have finished eight memorial scarves to be given to the circle of our friend Bronwyn who passed away one year ago. Only seven are pictured here as I was finishing the last one when it was taken. Thus far I’ve given two of them to their intended recipients and have six more to pass along as I see people this summer. Knitting these over the last year was a form of processing, remembrance, and quiet sitting in honour of my friend’s chaotic, brilliant, and tragic life – tinged with the richness of intended gift to those friends who remain. The scarves are all striped (in deference of B’s love of stripes) and hobo-style triangle neckerchiefs to mark her days of travel. She probably would have found this quite ridiculous – or been flattered – or a combination of the two:

As I was finishing number eight – I knew that one more would still have to come after the anniversary of B’s death – for a friend who lives out east these days — but just as that happened, the friend out east wrote and told us that she has been diagnosed with breast cancer, so instead of a memorial scarf I will be knitting her a comfort shawl – something I’ll start as soon as the yarn I ordered arrives.

Finally, I have picked up an embroidery project that I prepped almost two years ago and then never started. This will be a bag or a panel for a bag once it’s done:

Embroidery isn’t something I have done much of – I am imprecise and impatient with it most of the time, which means I’ve never practiced enough to get beyond that state. As I get older however, I’ve noticed that once something is finished and usable – I’m rarely concerned with its perfection – which frees me to do what I want! And so I’m stitching – this will be for myself as I can’t get enough of small project and picnic bags in my life.

As I close this little review of work in the past few weeks I am reminded of the passage by Kahlil Gibran  – which I take to heart more and more as I cut, sew, weave, and stitch each made thing to be passed from hand to hand:

And what is it to work with love?
It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart,
even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.
It is to build a house with affection,
even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.
It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy,
even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.
It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,
And to know that all the blessed dead
are standing about you and watching.

A year ago we packed up the last of our things and left Vancouver. A year ago there was a big spaz about our money being transferred properly for our real estate deal so that while on the ferry to Gabriola we weren’t sure we would be allowed in the house we had just purchased. A year ago we got it all sorted out and slept on the floor of our new house, waiting for the next day when the moving van to arrive.

And so it’s been. One year.

There’s a lot of things I can say about this move – but the bottom line is that I am very glad for it, and I have no regrets about leaving the city for a small island, nor a desire to return to any city (even a smaller/cheaper one than Vancouver). We have just weathered a pretty crappy winter, with snow, power outages, and even a burst pipe caused by rats chewing through it in the kitchen- much of which I dealt with on my own while Brian was in the city. And even so ….

Because while some of the “convenience” of city life has receded,  so have a lot of other things – noise, traffic, anger, angst, crowded sidewalks, crammed buses, and the feeling of civility ever diminishing around me. These things have been replaced by spaciousness – time in the studio or the kitchen, on the beach, and in the woods – a zendo of my very own – and plenty of room to throw parties when we don’t feel like being quiet. Brian and I have discovered more quality interaction despite the fact he is away three days per week – it seems that full absence on some days leads to increased presence when we are together. With all external life toned down, I meet the pressures of work and my union more gracefully and with way less freaking out! There is simply more time and energetic space, and working from home has allowed for a better integration of my life and my working life.

This is not to say that all things are perfect – all communities have idiosyncrasies, and the smaller the place the more pronounced that are. Living in a community of retired people has meant that it’s been difficult to meet and make friends our age who don’t have young children. Also related to the retired population, there is some real fussbudgeting in the community – people who make a party of filing complaints against local businesses and individuals – which is a drag. And while most of the island is super welcoming, there is definitely a vibe in some quarters that people don’t want newcomers or changes to the island – even though a lot of these changes are just about the greater society changing (you might have noticed this whole boomer to millennial changing of the guard is causing some tension out there).

But you know, people are people wherever you go. And this island is full of pretty awesome people as well – from the local farmers who put most of the food on  my table, right on down to the folks who work at the foodbank and keep the Commons project afloat. I’m might impressed with the community-mindedness of this place overall – and although we don’t have a ton of time in our working lives, we try to drop in where we can.

In the last few weeks, we have met some local folks who might actually be friend material – our age, musician types, in our neighbourhood – which is pretty exciting. Not to mention the fact that our proximity to Victoria means that we’ve seen a lot more of our island people – friends and family – over the last year. Since we’ve been here I don’t think there’s been a single month without visitors – which very much plays to my hosting skills.

Although it’s only been a year, we’ve pretty invested here now – and I can’t imagine where else would allow us to be in a rural community and yet still close to city amenities and our families. We still have a place in the city if and when work calls us there – but for the long haul, this is where we have landed – and I’m feeling pretty good about that.

(Picture above is of a 72 million year old fossil that we found on the beach near our house. Video below was taken two weeks ago on the beach below our house at sunrise. Pretty great, eh?)

This week has presented a bit of an odd situation in that I was told that I may no longer have access to an office.

For the last (nearly) year, I have been working from home three days per week and in an office in Nanaimo one or two days a week days per week. Going into the office makes my days long because it involves a ferry, but it also ensures that I see people during the work week. My actual work team is in Ottawa (and spread around to other places too) and some days (like yesterday), I’m in phone meetings for most of the day anyways. All my work can be done remotely as I do web planning, information architecture and so on. My work team doesn’t really care where I sit because I’m on a phone/chat with them regardless of my physical location.

So, I’m trying to decide whether or not I should fight to keep this office space which is a something I’m sure I could win, or should I just let it go since there seems to be some reticence to allow me to keep “squatting” there. Technically I do not have a right to office space in Nanaimo, as I do not fit within that part of the organization. Things changed with my work reporting and now I must reapply for the space with new managerial signatures, or I could just keep using the space as I do until it’s eventually cut off and deal with that if it happens.

I’m not sure that going into the office really does much for me even socially as I don’t share work with anyone in that office, and I’ve had days when I go in and no one’s really around anyway. Also, when I work from home, I can do things like bake a loaf of bread or throw a load of laundry in – which gives me a much better work/life flow. Productivity for me (I have come to learn) does not depend on location, but on mental state – so that’s not really a consideration.

At the root, this is about identity. If I am part of an organization, what does it mean if I no longer have a physical space in that organization? Is it easier for them to let me go? Do I have less stature in the eyes of my colleagues? Also, as the president of my union local, is it weird that I no longer work in an office building?

What I’m considering at this point is holding off on the formal paperwork and simply moving to less time in the office overall to see what that feels like. This week, because I have a cold, I only went in one day. Next week I have required travel in the middle of the week to somewhere else so I probably won’t go in at all. Perhaps the week after I’ll work from home the whole week. And I’m also aware that building will be undergoing refit in the next few months which means that I will work from home exclusively to avoid the noise and mess.

I used to believe that I was not the kind of person who could work from home, but I’ve found in the last year that this isn’t true and that there are lots of advantages to this arrangement. I’ve got good work hygiene in that I do get dressed properly every day; have a separate work space that is not inside my home; keep regular work hours that I stick to. And when I am working from home, I start and end my days much earlier which works for my counterparts in other time zones.

So far, so good. But what if? What if? What if not being in an office makes me more vulnerable to layoff? What if I get isolated from my work group? What if I can’t control my work future the way I want to? When I explore this a bit more I see that what I want is something I can’t have – a way to predict the future, some kind of control that is elusive no matter where I sit.

I also have to acknowledge that this is true – I’m pretty sure this isn’t my last position inside my organization. I have no desire to move on just yet, but with eleven years to go until I collect my pension, I suspect there is at least one more change of position ahead. I can’t know that of course, but given my past eighteen years of employment – there’s a good chance that will be so. There’s even some chance that whatever I do next will be at least part of the time in Vancouver, not Nanaimo at all! So I don’t know how much any of it matters in the end, as long as I keep contributing, keep working, keep showing up on the phone for every meeting – I expect where I sit is less of an issue than I am making it.

I had a bit of a weaving breakthrough this weekend.

It turns out that some shuttles (the thing with the weft thread in it) are more easily thrown than others. Also, it turns out that sometimes standing is better than sitting. On my 4-shaft J-made loom, these details made all the difference and I’ve completed two different fabrics in the last two days.
But let me back up a bit here. The photo up top – that’s fabric being made on my Ashford Knitter’s Loom. I got that loom for my birthday – it is 20 inches wide and capable of making cloth just shy of that width in plain weave (that is, the equivalent of a 2-shaft loom) The very first thing I made on it was some rather grumpy (to me) fabric out of some yarn that I didn’t feel like using for anything else. Because the yarns were so unbalanced (that is, totally different fibres and weights), the weave was uneven. Initially I was really unhappy about this — so unhappy that I didn’t take pictures of it or anything and I wadded it up in the bottom of my loom bag. Then last weekend I had a need for a small mat for the zendo and I remembered the rough fabric that I had thrown away from me on completing.

Turns out, the rough weave was less upsetting to me five weeks after the fact, and after cutting, seaming and finishing I had this:

As in, a totally usable piece of fabric that works as a rough weave and for its intended purpose.

After making the first rough fabric, I had started warping some tea towel fabric in orange and natural cotton and then abandoned it in the dining room partway done. It sat there for about six weeks until last weekend, while getting ready for easter festivities, I decided to finish threading and tying it up so I could move the loom out of the way and set my table. After my guests departed on Monday I was left with a fully warped loom, and so I wound some bobbins up for one of my boat shuttles.

I had not been successful up until this point at learning to “throw” the shuttle on my J-Made 4-shaft loom, and so I was surprised when a little way into weaving on the rigid heddle I was throwing pretty easily – after only a few hours of practice it was relatively smooth (and would have been smoother if my warp was a bit more uniform). This weaving thing suddenly seemed possible.

So I pondered if my throwing problem on the J-made was the shuttle and went up to the studio to take a look. I first tried with my newfound throwing skills using the small open bottomed shuttle that I had on the loom…. but no dice. Even with my improved technique I could not get the shuttle to fly. So I switched off to a close bottomed shuttle and lo! Things became much easier.

And so I spent the last few days weaving off two warps on two different looms. Yesterday morning I finished my first set of tea towels:

Tonight I will finish the orange tea towels. And then I will start the process all over.

What I am really trying to write about here is how we learn things, how the lessons come from picking things up, putting them down, and picking them up again. There was a time in my life when I refused to try things I didn’t already know how to do because I was afraid of looking stupid. That changed when I was a little past thirty and I decided to learn about sewing. There are things that I made in that learning time that I still use today and I expect that will be true about these early weaving attempts as well.

I am thankful that I got over that insecurity that stopped me so many times when I was younger, but even now I feel it when I struggle with mastering new skills. I do walk away sometimes, or I pick up different tools for awhile and play with those instead. What this last week has reminded me is that 1) even ugly things are useful and often beautiful, 2) learning time is allowed, and 3) coming from a different angle often helps break down the lessons.

So I have two sets of tea towels. Tea towels with issues, no doubt, but usable objects in their own right. I look forward to two more projects going onto the looms: a nine yard warp for many more tea towels on the J-made and a small floor mat made with “found” yarn on the knitters loom. More lessons ahead!

This past weekend, Brian and I hosted another fairly epic 3-day party which involved two full dinners (tapas-style on Saturday, sit-down on Sunday) for 18-24 people. The photos above are of both of those menu spreads and I decided to share here my menus for both dinners and some thoughts about planning for large gatherings.

First, the thoughts: Brian and I have been hosting parties together for almost ten years now, and before that we were both hosts as single people and in other relationships – as broke young adults, and now as comfortable middle-aged people. Bottom-line, we have a lot of experience. Hosting twenty-plus people for a whole weekend is not for amateurs – nor is it for single people who have friends who don’t pitch in and lend a hand.

I have both a partner and friends who are willing to make the party – which is what makes this type of gathering a possibility. Do not believe those Pinterest boards that try to convince you that dinner for twenty is easy if you just do one step a day for five days – it’s a lot of work no matter what menu you plan, and you need some kind of helpers if you are going to get through it without being grumpy.

But! I have a few ideas about things that work:

• Everyone wants to bring something. You can tell them no, but they will bring something anyway – so direct that energy. Otherwise you have ten loaves of bread or a flotilla of plastic tupperware bearing hummus. This doesn’t mean you have to potluck it, but there are so many small things one might need – like toothpicks, or napkins, a pound of coffee for breakfast (if you are overnighting it), etc. Also, wine.
• Further to this, if people offer to make food and a bit of potluck is tolerable (I don’t do potluck for sit-down dinners, but that’s me), it’s okay to provide them with a recipe to use or improvise on so you can ensure that things go together on the table.
• If you are planning a party that goes all weekend and requires many people to be fed, plan the first dinner so as to result in leftovers for next day’s lunch. We did a tapas dinner on our first night of the weekend and made double the amount of chicken wings. There was tons of salads and cheese leftover as well. That plus some fresh bread – it’s really all people want or need in between two large dinners (and drinks).
• One moderately fancy thing means that everything else on the table is elevated. In the case of Sunday’s sit-down dinner, that was an asparagus/ricotta/phyllo tart. Homemade flatbreads did the trick for Saturday’s tapas. Not everything has to be fancy.
• On the sit-down dinner front –  plan a mix of foods served warm and at room temperature. The main course should be hot, but everything else can be a mix. The Easter dinner menu below proved to be an excellent combination in terms of getting things out of the kitchen and onto the table at appropriate temperatures.
• It goes without saying – but do what you can in advance. I had bread dough on the rise from earlier in the week, salad dressing in the fridge by Wednesday, and a whole day of advance prep on Friday. The more organized you are the better you will feel.
• Do accommodate food intolerance and allergies from the ground up. Do not plan whatever meal you intended and then make a single side dish that your xxx-intolerant person can eat – it’s rude and cross contamination can happen in a kitchen if you aren’t careful. If you are hosting, you are hosting, and that means not making people sick. In the case of this dinner party I had to plan for tomato, garlic/onion free meals, and vegetarian guests. (All garlic & onions in the recipes below was omitted except in the meatballs)
• More people in the kitchen during the meal prep is not helpful. Best combination is one reliable worker on kitchen tasks (my friend Jon performed this role) and one free ranger who is making sure that things outside the kitchen stay organized and tidy (that was Brian on Sunday). Otherwise, everyone else should stay out of the way.
• Where your friends can really shine is after the meal! Immediate clean-up afterwards makes everything feel organized, and helps to create a feeling of being attended to. Lucky me, I didn’t even have to organize this on the weekend – Brian and friends just swooped right in and did it while I have was having deep post-dinner conversations. Blessed!

Menu #1: Buffet style, Tapas for 24
All recipes below were doubled or tripled, except the meatballs. Meats and hot dishes were made by me, the veggie sides were brought by guests.

• Garlic herb flatbread
• White kidney bean hummus flavoured with olive oil, lemon juice, cumin, and corriander. Food process to desired flavours and consistency.
• Lamb meatballs with mint
• Grilled Basque chicken wings
• Tortilla Espanola (this did not work well without onions, I wouldn’t do it again)
• Marinated manchego cheese
• Sherried mushrooms
• Carrots and lentils in olive oil
• Carrot salad with oregano and cumin
• Cheeses and olives from the deli
• Nectarine and anise tarts (preserves thickened with cornstarch and cooked into filling, miniature tart shells, bake in the oven at 375 for 18 minutes)

Leftovers note: I have the lentils and carrot salad leftover in my fridge at the moment, and intend to heat those in some chicken stock and then blend to make soup with for the week.

Menu #2: Site-down, Easter dinner for 18
All food made by myself, with help on the roasting of meats by Brian. I made two dishes of everything and set two tables separately.

• White and whole wheat breads made from the No-knead bread recipe and the Healthy Artisan Breads in 5-minutes a day book respectively.
• Herbed butter (yes, you can make your own butter easily with a stand mixer)
• Herbed ricotta, asparagus, phyllo tart x 2
• Sage and Butternut Squash risotto x 1.5 | This is an Instantpot recipe. In general, I do not recommend risotto for a large dinner party unless you have a pressure cooker. It takes too much attention otherwise.
• Spinach, walnut, apple salad with blue cheese dressing
• 1 large ham from the pigs raised at Singing Lands Ranch, warmed in the oven
• Beer can chicken x 2 – cooked on the bbq
• Dessert was provided by Jill who brought us meringue nests with lemon curd topped with berries (I wish I had a photo of that!)

Leftovers note: The chicken carcasses were turned into stock in the Instantpost immediately following dinner. The remaining spinach, toasted walnuts, and blue cheese dressing were turned into an incredible pasta dinner last night with the addition of some rotini and bacon (we picked the few apples in the salad out before we turned it into pasta sauce).

This is the third weekend-long party we have thrown since moving here eleven months ago – and definitely a successful one in that there was much good conversation and laughter, and also that I have very few leftovers in my fridge.

And now I return to my semi-monastic life of work, gardening, and meditation as Brian returned to the city today and I’m on my own until Friday. So quiet. So filled up from a weekend of love and attention.