Workshop Notes - 12/13/23

This past weekend was sort of a special one for my making. I received a pound of chocolate-colored Shetland roving from Durango, CO-based Dyers Wool, who I get all my Shetland fiber from these days, and was just globsmaked with its beauty. Its been a minute since I got emotional over wool, but I was really taken with this fiber. It was not too dissimilar to my experience with spinning and weaving up Lady’s fleece, who is a Navajo Churro sheep in Spring Coyote Ranch’s flock. It’s just the depth of brown that does something to my soul. It stirs something in me that I didn’t know existed. While spinning Lady’s fleece, I knew that no embellishment was needed to weave with it. I would just let Lady’s tell her own story through her fleece. I feel similarly with this Shetland. It feels quite perfect all on its own.

I opened up that box and set to work spinning immediately. Honestly, I have not really stopped spinning since Friday night, which has been a balm for my mind and hard on my hands. I forgot what it was like to just use a monotonous task like spinning wipe the slate of your mind clean. You just stand there suspended with your drop spindle engrossed in the undulating repetitions of drawing fiber from your roving ball, pre-drafting the perfect lengths of roving, and spinning them up one at a time. Suns rise, suns set: here we remain accumulating more yarn on our niddy noddy for our web. That said, I do not usually spin this much this fast. I am through spinning roughly 6 of the 16 ounces, and my hands ache. I have been stretching out my fingers and wrists, which has helped keep me in my flow with minimal discomfort.

I felt so entranced by the spinning that I started uttering spells over the yarn as it transformed from roving to thread. That moment in the draft zone where I am bringing yarn into being is always the most sacred and I have yet to fully bring my magic into my spinning. I certainly have with my weaving, having written a three part series last year documenting one one might enchant their fiber art practice (Part One, Part Two, Part Three). My magic always comes from those mundane, monotonous moments where I am not trying to merge my magic with my craft. It just happens and I have learned to respect that part of my practice and not force it. Having devoted myself to doing some protection magic for Gaza earlier in the day and still having all my candles lit on my alters, the spells for protection, trust, and safety flowed from my lips in unison with my industrious little fingers.

I must attribute this development to Jennifer Rose Marie Serna of Wapato Island Farm, who entrusted me to make a ritual cloth for them with my handspun Shetland. It’s not often the case that folx contact me for fiber magic, but when they do my heart sings. I am so thankful Jennifer saw me in this work and asked for a piece. For this spinning, I periodically sprinkled rose water on the copp of yarn accumulating on the spindle to infuse it with each parts protective and heart supporting energy. Finally, I set the spindle on my ancestral altar to rest with Brighid, the Morrigan, the Cailleach, and my mom watching over it. It was really all I needed to fill me up with so much gratitude for this craft. Could you imagine a world where this is the sort of work we did everyday? I could. Maybe one day it will be possible.

Mix of the week — “Those Unseen Forces”

This week’s mix is based on soundscapes that give you the sensation of experiencing realities outside the norm. It gives you the sort of sounds that transport you out of the mundane and into an experience of the liminal. It includes Justin Walter, Wanderwelle, Radiohead, Emma Ruth Rundle, Red Sparowes, Ragana, Grouper, Midwife (Sister Grotto Alias), Vyva Melinkolya. The whole mix is basically a set up for those last two Vyva tracks, which I just love. Their latest album “Unbecoming” just came out on bandcamp and I highly suggest listening to it and purchasing it. I already have a digital copy and will be purchasing a physical copy as soon a label picks it up to release. I added songs to the mix one at a time from when I popped on that Justin Walter LP on Sunday until yesterday when I finalized the mix. I was only allowed one song from each record I listened to and the song had to hit my heart strings of give me the goosebumps. I hope you enjoy.

That’s all I got for you today. As always, I am grateful for your support of my work, dear reader, whether as a free or a paid subscriber. Our next two essays, sunday’s and wednesday’s essay, will be for paid subscribers only. If interested in becoming a paid subscriber to this project, monthly subscribers are $5 dollars a month and annual subscriptions are $50. I would love to have you as part of the commuity.

Be well,

James