Red Cedar

Whenever I go on holiday, I tell myself that somehow I’m going to keep up the writing, blogging, posting – because why not? Vacations are all about free time, right? Except they aren’t, because wherever you go you want to experience that place – hike, kayak, walk about, eat ice cream – all the things! And so as much as I would like vacation time to be productive creative time, it usually isn’t. You would think by now I would have learned that. As much as I love a break, I always come home feeling the need to get caught up, which is the state I’ve been in the last couple of days.

I returned home from Cortes Island on Thursday evening, and spent much of yesterday running errands and cleaning my kitchen (scrubbed the fridge top to bottom!), because my parents are coming today, we have a house concert tonight and our long weekend party starts next Friday (plus I have to go to Victoria for a union-related matter in the middle of the week). That’s a lot of coming and going in the next ten days! Fortunately, we are very adept at this hosting business, and the friends who come for the long weekend are all DIY-oriented so we’ll make it happen no matter how behind I’m feeling at the moment.

I’m catching up in the studio this morning a bit with some writing and fibre in the dye pot (overdyeing madder with cochineal, then doing a skein with marigold in preparation for indigo dyeing in August). I’ve got my small loom almost dressed (just a little more to go and I’ll start weaving again), and a couple of knitting projects nearing completion. Towards fall I’m going to have to start sewing some clothes, since I’ll need a few things for the city now that I’ll be heading back there more regularly. I haven’t spent any time in Vancouver since March 2020, which feels strange after a lifetime spent there.

I’m heading out to the farmer’s market this morning to pick up my weekly veggie box that I missed on Tuesday, and then my folks will arrive and we’ll spend the day visiting and eating before tonight’s show. Going away is a lovely break, but I’m always so glad to be back in the flow my life – even the chores are part of what sustain my feeling of place in the world. I sometimes think this home-body-ness is a kind of weakness, as I’m clearly lacking the spirit of adventure so many people have, but I can’t ignore what my nervous system so clearly tells me about what feels right.

I’m on Cortes Island this week – a couple hours north of the island I live on, and I’m amazed at how much quieter it is here. A quarter of the population, at least double the landmass, and much further from major cities. I feel very far away from home even though the views (ocean, mountains, arbutus trees) are much the same. The friend I am travelling with has been coming here for many decades, and knows all the good places to hike and kayak. She found a perfect rental suite for us, and then it turned out that (happy coincidence!) one of my Zen friends also lives on the property in her bus, high upon the bluff.

I didn’t post here last week because I was preparing to go on holiday, and also in discussion about the possibility of a new job in September. The paperwork isn’t signed yet, but it looks pretty real and thinking about the shift has occupied my whole mind since last Monday. Job change is no small thing for me; I’ve been with the same organization for 23 years, and worked with one of the Communications shops (though in different roles) for my whole career. While this job is in the same organization, it will be in a different line of work entirely, and with more responsibility than I’ve had in awhile.

I’ve been looking for a change for a couple of years now, and since my manager returned to work a couple of months ago (I had been acting in her position for the better part of a year), trying to plot my next move. Difficult to do when I don’t have certain qualifications (like another language), or when some of my most developed skillset comes from my union role and not my official work capacity (some people consider union leadership an asset, others won’t touch it at all). But I do have a network of people after all of these years, and that suddenly panned out in the form of a new program someone I know is responsible for.

Over the course of my career I have often wished that way back when I started out in my mid-twenties someone close to the end of their career had sat me down and explained a few things. About career arcs, and how to manage them over the long term. About understanding career development over decade-long cycles, not 6-month leadership programs. About the divisions between junior, intermediate, and senior levels – and how to work from one point to the next. I suppose these days, few people stay with one organization for thirty-five years and so mostly we are left to library books and career consultants to figure it out. For my part, I’ve managed to move into a new project or role every five years or so, even though my career planning has been haphazard and frustrated at many turns.

I’m in the last decade or so of the employment stage of my life. I could go in 6 years (at 55), or work a few more for a bit more pension. What I decide to do about that will depend on a variety of factors. But until recently I had thought I would end my career parked in my current project management/strategic communications position. During the pandemic, I worked with others to fix a number of weak points on my current work team – developing org charts, process documents, and staffing strategies – righting a badly-listing ship as a result of those efforts. I had believed that as soon as that was all done, I would happily return to other projects and press forward in my role. But instead, things have felt a bit flat and I’ve been unmotivated in all but the most basic work. So even though I know the new role will come with more stress (new program, lots of stuff to figure out), it’s the right time to take it on. If it goes well, it will also be the right thing to keep me engaged through to retirement.

When I get back from this little island paradise I’m on, I hope to see paperwork waiting for me to sign so I can tell my team I’m leaving and start wrapping up my projects for handover at the end of August. I’m feeling more confidence about this move than nerves right now, and I’m ready to get started! I am also dying to share what little I know about the new program and my role, so as soon as that gets more contour, I’ll be shading in the details here.

It’s been a very interesting year for me career-wise, Covid changed things in ways I never expected. I’m curious to see where this goes next.

Summer Textile School is fully in swing! I’m glad my dye studio is outdoors so that during the hot, hot heat I was able to keep dyeing without warming up the house. I’ve come to realize that before I can seriously dye some yardage or larger skeins of yarn I’m going to have to come to the end of this experimental phase – but I’m enjoying it so much! I have some more yarn to turn into small skeins and then once that is done I’ll have to cut myself off and get on with the yardage dyeing.

Dyeing activities

Water

• I’ve switched over to using the big cistern on our property which has way cleaner water than our rain barrels. I needed to get a hose, which is why I wasn’t using it before – but so glad I am now as its closer to my studio and way less hauling.

Dye space and materials

• Bought a couple more pots at the local recycling centre this week – one smaller one for cooking smaller dyestuff down (cochineal I’m looking at you), and another mid-sized pot for dyeing in. 
• I’m starting to run low on some of the dyes I’ve been using, trying to figure out whether it’s worth investing in extracts over whole dyes. It’s nothing I have to decide right now, but in the case of Madder which is hard to wash out in its ground form, I might just go for it.  
• Did some more yarn prep with Oxalic Acid – though I forgot to scour. I’ll be curious to see how those turn out.

Learning

• I have worked my way through my dye plans for yellows and browns as well as reds. Not all the reds are completely done (one is in the rinse pot, another in the dye pot), and I will be doing some more dye experimenting with madder and brazilwood to get different shades for my gamp project. 
• I’ve learned that getting a true red is difficult and there are a lot of variations depending on water ph. I’ve ended up with more pink/purples than reds.
• While not always true I note that fibre mordanted with oxalic acid often produces a lighter/less intense colour than the alum mordanted fibre. This is great for my gamp project as it is providing me with variation in a single dyepot.
• I’ve also been experimenting with using dye exhaust and then throwing another colour in. For example, I added Osage orange my Brazilwood exhaust to get an orange colour, and Madder to the Cochineal exhaust for more reds. This allows my materials and water to do double duty.

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Weaving activities

• Finished the weaving of the Asymmetry sample from the Jane Stafford Guild (sample #1 from season 2). In that project I learned about cutting and replacing warp sections, balancing cloth with different materials, and making colourway choices. Hemming those now.
• Watching Season 2, Episode 3 of JST Guild materials and working through exercises
• Created warp chains for Sample #2/Season 2 of the JST Guild projects. This has so far involved learning how to build a warp chain with five threads at once (much more complicated than I thought it would be).  
• Worked on towel design draft for beach/sauna towels. Next up will be sampling.