Red Cedar

The weather forecast keeps promising rain, but every day it’s supposed to come, the prediction is moved forward for a day. This results in a lot of frustration around here when we have decided that today will be the day the garden won’t need so much watering, but then it does anyways. Not to mention the whole drought thing that has everyone worried about their wells. I look now and see that what was supposed to be 2 days of rain is now 1 (a 60% chance of showers tonight and tomorrow) followed by what looks like another heat wave later next week. At the moment, the weather is feeling very reasonable and almost cool, so I’ll take what relief from the heat I can get!

The start of August marks a shift for me. Even though fall is technically weeks away – the month of August begins the dying time, a time of cutting back and simply maintaining what continues to thrive (like the dhalias). In a drought year, I feel it even more, with the lawn reduced to brown dust and the smoky skies. It’s still beautiful here on Gabriola Island and many good swims and outdoor dinners (and concerts) are ahead of us before we truly slip into fall, but it’s dark when I get up in the mornings again and I can’t help but notice the sharpening edge of autumn in the warm air.

I notice too how my projects shift without much planning. I found myself making a list of sewing projects for the first time in months, noting the gaps in my wardrobe to fill before the weather gets cold again, and buying some new patterns to try. I never want to sew in the summertime, but I can’t ignore the back-to-school energy of autumn that brings to mind new clothes and stationary supplies!

So after months of no sewing, I’ve got a muslin for a shirt in the works! It’s a pull-over top with a tunic option which are the kind of garments I need more of in my wardrobe. My body shape has changed a lot since I started lifting weights two years ago, so I’ve got some sewing to do to catch up with my fall and winter needs (I made a lot of summer things last year) – and shirts is where I am starting, to be followed by at least one dress and a couple of skirts and pairs of pants. Sewing is time consuming, so I don’t expect to get twenty new garments before the winter, but a few new things will help expand out the wardrobe.

For those who don’t know the lingo: A muslin is a way to test a pattern without cutting into the “good” fabric – I try to make my muslins out of thrift store fabric that I like, so if works, I have a wearable garment at the end. If it doesn’t, I don’t fret about the $2 on materials I’ve spent (the two thrift stores here sell fabric for next to nothing). Making a muslin isn’t mandatory, I don’t make one all the time – but shirts can be tricky for me (breasts!) so I often muslin dresses and shirts. I never bother to muslin with skirts or pants (I know the main alteration I have to do for every pants pattern and start there).

I’m still dyeing and weaving though! The dyeing will continue through until the end of September (or whenever the weather gets stinky) and weaving is year-round. I just need to somehow shoehorn in a little bit of time for garment making. No problem right?

In other news, I’m still waiting on paperwork for the new job so I can’t talk about it quite yet, but I have been assured that it’s happening. I just don’t know exactly when. My regular work continues apace in any event, and I’ve taken on a small accessibility project for August which will round out my summer of bits and pieces.

While July was pretty busy, August will see me at home for the whole month and not hosting nearly so many people! We do have house shows the next three weekends in a row, but beyond that I am looking forward to hunkering down in the studio and getting the house in order for the fall. There will likely be some canning activity this month (there has been remarkably little so far), but I’m not feeling uptight about filling the shelves or anything. I do have some limes leftover from our August long weekend party that I’ll be making some lime pickle with this weekend! But besides that I’ve got no plans in the near future and that feels pretty great right about now.

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.