Healing Handcrafting

Tag Archives: nature


by Leave a comment

Monday’s Musings~ Let’s Not Forget How Human We Are

It’s been a bit, but not for lack of anything to say. Since this is just a post for musings I thought I’d share a couple of little bits of what’s been rumbling on in my brain lately.

First this:

FullSizeRender-8

We’ve been reading Lord of the Rings to our daughter at night and very often I find passages to be absolutely relevant to life now. I wonder how it’s all going to go for us. Will we as a human race wake up and see nature, Nature, for what it is? An ever present guide, evidence of creation itself? Will we look consistently beyond our borders and see how much we are all connected by the desire to live, to love and to survive? Us humans would do well to read our old legends and to try to gather up the living wisdom in our stories. Courage, the Hero’s Journey, making choices on all of these crossroads we face… we need all of the guidance and wisdom we can hold.

Managing existential anxiety is supported by weaving. I’ve got three circular weaving projects going right now and have finally started the weaving a bag on a box project I’ve been wanting to try for months now! I love all that Sarah Swett puts out and think this is super clever and fun. I’ll show you how it turns out when it’s all done.

 

I’ve been reading a lot about the Druids and early Celtic Christianity lately as part of a rather epic ancestry research binge I’ve been on for a while. I’m early in my studying, but I’ll tell you what, the Celts seemed pretty cool. They, even in their transition into Christianity, didn’t push their religious ideas on other people expecting them to drop what they already believed in. What I’ve read so far anyway, is that they deeply abided by their love and devotion to nature and saw god in their every day activities. Their connection to their own spirituality was not separate from nature and from other people but was rather wholly connected to it. I love this quote, which is offered in the book The Celtic Way, by Ian Bradley,

“As Noel O’Donoghue has eloquently observed, the Celts were deeply conscious of rhythm:

the rhythms of human life and the body’s ages and changes, the rhythms of the seasons, of work such as weaving and milking, of reaping with hook or scythe, of threshing the corn, of men rowing together, of women walking together. All these rhythms, and many others, were vocalised in song and what was called port beul or voice music

“The Celts sang as they worked, as they played and as they prayed. In Gaelic there is no word for music that is not sung while in Welsh the word for poetry and music is the same…” (pgs. 90-91).

Why does this all come to mind right now? I guess because in working with wool and with fibers, I am consistently reminded that we are at all times connected to what is ancient, what is searching, seeking and surviving, and I long ever more to stay connected to that reality. I think it gives perspective and reminds us that we are a migrating and growing species and that we have survived because of a willingness to change and adapt, as well as remain connected to what is completely human about us.

Look at this cool video of women waulking wool and singing as they work.

Here’s a little bit of my own weaving from a recent class I took at a wonderful place called Mad River Woolery in Waitsfield, Vermont. I learned some cool weaving techniques on an Ashford rigid heddle loom. I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of my new Schacht rigid heddle loom… oh my!

IMG_2276

Okay… so much more to say but I’ll spread it out! I finished my very green sweater which I’ll tell you all about on Friday (St. Patrick’s Day!), I’ve made friends with some sock puppets, and spring and summer plans are underway for gardens, wool fun and spinning yarn.

I hope you are all well,

Bradie

 

 

 

 

 


by 3 Comments

Monday’s Musings

On the way to the store yesterday, my children and I saw a fox running down the middle of the road. It was early in the morning, so the much travelled but domestic road was not busy. We pulled up close to it, and saw that it was in rough shape. Its eyes were squinted nearly shut, its tail bet and injured. It took every amount of self control I had not to scoop it up and put it in the car. I kind of used our car to serve as a sheepherding dog, angling it towards an open field, at least to get it out of the middle of the road. Once it obliged, I pulled off and called the police. The police! I apologized, saying I didn’t know exactly who to call but here’s the deal… and the officer listened, got clarifying information, and said he’d call the Fish and Game Department to check it out. Note to Self: get that number in my phone!

We drove on, wishing the fox luck and feeling mighty sad. I think we all felt the weight of our impact on the world in that moment, in our heavy car on our road surrounded by houses and fast moving life. For the rest of the day, I thought about all the stuff I waste so regularly, even when I make big sweeping decisions not to. I thought about the fact that I don’t know what rabies looks like, or what the technical rules are about picking up hurt animals. It started to snow later, a great big dumping beautiful snow that we’ve been waiting all winter for, and I hoped that the officer really did call the right people, and that the little hurt fox was found and treated with respect. Ironic, given that this last weekend was also the time set aside for the annual coyote killing contest. People are encouraged to kill as many as they can, no restrictions. Prizes are available for all sorts of categories and as you might imagine, there is a lot of debate about such a gluttonous hunt.

We’re a complicated lot, us humans.

About to go on my hook: a beautiful, yummy bit of yarn spun by my friend Carol from Mountain Fiber Folk. This wool and bunny blend will soon be a new friend for Sherman, who needs a bit of companionship as he navigates this world of contrasts.

fullsizerender-164

Still on my needles:

img_1992

Here is the pattern. It’s on Ravelry, as well as in the beautiful and inspiring Issue 16 of Taproot.

A properly earned snow-day is the BEST! We. Will. Play.

img_1987

(Monday’s Musings is a new addition to Healing Handcrafting. It may or may not have something to do with handwork and fiber art, but it will always have a little something to do with life.)


by Leave a comment

Gratitude, Grief, Love and Yarn: Holding it All

It’s been almost a month since my last post. I have missed writing here and allowing for myself the space to reflect on and share thoughts about handwork, process and life. I’ve not handled political news and world news well and needed to take some serious steps back so that I could regain some sort of balance and be the kind of mother, wife, daughter, sister and friend I want to be. As I write that, I realize that the one area I’ve neglected significantly is how I want to be in relationship with myself. It’s a well-worn complaint really, one that I’m kind of tired of, but nevertheless, tending to my relationship with myself is always, always the first priority I have to take a hit when the rumblings of pressure, grief, work and responsibility register on the Richter Scale of the nervous system. I can feel the effects now, but they are more of a tugging, a call to get back to having yarn move through my fingers as it becomes part of an image made real, practicing hand-stitching so that I might learn something new and make textured and calming designs, an urge to walk through the outside, amidst people and alone.

I do have to say, another deep and abiding feeling I have as this year wraps up and a new one is about to begin, is gratitude. Immense gratitude. I am learning how to have this feeling while allowing for grief at the same time for the immeasurable suffering that is experienced by people all over the world. It’s requiring a lot of stretching and expanding and allowing for reality. All of it. Not just the little slivers that I experience in my life with my loves.

And, there’s the word… Love. It is all I come back to and all I strive towards.

“Love is absolutely vital for a human life. For love alone can awaken what is divine within you. In love, you grow and come home to your self. When you learn to love and to let your self be loved, you come home to the hearth of your own spirit. You are warm and sheltered. You are completely at one in the house of your own longing and and belonging.” Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom by John O’Donohue

There are so many ways to share love and cultivate it in a life. This will be a primary focus of mine in the coming year, years, life…

~And, here’s a bit of a view of the last month~

Some things I made for gifts and for a little vendor pop-up in our town…

owl with monocle
grumpy owl in nest
woman
little nest with little person
nature appetizer plate
owl with feathers
a dream catcher in progress for a friend’s daughter

And a little bit of our outside life!

who are you?
pure delight!
turkeys making their way into our woods
my loves

 

A sweater project I’m taking on!

img_1242

My work space (a small part of it!)…

I’ve dug into working on genealogy and wow is it FUN!

familytree

Some projects that I’ve been doing with kids at our local school. Such fun! The circular weaving bird’s nest project came from this wonderful crafter. Check her out!

bird’s nest
kids’ weaving progects
circular weaving

 

I hope the last few days of 2016, quite an ass-kicker of a year, prove to be gentle, filled with love and all that is precious to you.

 


by 4 Comments

The Coyotes Called Last Night

This is the time of year that marks the beginning of my favorite season. In summer, when it is hot, humid, froggy smelling and quiet, I am a better version of myself. It is easier for me to gain perspective and to slow down. Heat requires a different pattern. I learned that from my brother when we lived in Florida. He owned a landscaping company, and he and his crew went out early in the morning, to beat the suffocating heat of summer late-afternoons. 


For me, summer has become the season for washing wool and imagining all I’ll do with it. I occasionally enjoy blasts of creativity and the drive to work up an idea. Last night, I listened to the coyotes, screaming, yipping, barking. I’ve come to crave that sound on hot summer nights. It reminds me of last year about this time, when I sat up late and experimented with hat designs, almost too hot to be handling wool, but not quite. Then, like now, the coyotes did their wild thing and I felt comforted the way I did when I heard snow plows working in the middle of the night the month after we had our first baby. 

I may be finally starting to get the hang of understanding and riding the waves of seasonal rhythms. Rather than charging through each day as though it’s a job, I’m longing to respect the specifics. We are not really meant to do the same things day after day, with the same timing and the same momentum. It seems to me like there’s a reason for energy surges that visit some of us in the spring and fall months~ there’s a lot of work to do to bring a garden up and put a garden to bed! There’s a reason for the home-ing in that winter calls for (and that’s so often challenged by our steadfast cultural allegiance to busyness); we need a time to go within. To rest. To regroup. To gather the insight and energy required to face the coming seasons of outward growth and physical labor. And to let go of those things that have died away. 

For now, I’ll enjoy the early morning garden tending, the wool processing, the swimming and playing with my children, and the planning. And I’ll relish the moments I get to hear other life happening outside my open windows, in the pitch dark during the deepest hours of night.