Travel Fear

We're getting ready to leave for our trip to Maui and I'm not as freaked out as last time. Last time we flew to Hawaii, I was so stressed out and nervous that I was actually vomiting in the airplane bathroom most of the flight. It was all due to some weird mind trip I threw myself on. I was never afraid or nervous about flying, I had 5 other adults to watch my kids and play with them, I knew where I was going... but still. I freaked myself out and had a panic attack in an airplane over the Pacific Ocean. A few months ago I flew to Denver all by myself and had a wonderful successful trip. Now, I'm flying to Maui. I can do it. I don't have to be scared. I have everything I need and I can't wait to land.

Change, or Moral of the Story: Feel the Bern

So much has changed in my life lately, without hardly changing at all. I still live in the downstairs bedroom of my parents house, I still drive my high school car, I still don't like to go anywhere unless it happens to be with people I absolutely love. But those are just surface details. I can feel my self changing, I've been learning so much about my craft. I'm almost confidant enough in my self to actually call my self an artist. I've been learning new tools and techniques, color theory, weave structures, I even got the larger of my looms, the Sanjo 8 harness, moved into the house! But more than that, I've been learning a lot about humans. I've been reading and browsing a lot on race relations and gender identity. There is so much anger and misunderstanding in this world, it feels like the only thing I can do is gather as many perspectives as I can and sort out the gentle, peace-filled ones, and add my own to the pile. The world is a beautiful place, and it is filled with people who do scary things. I hold onto the hope that the love other folks have for the world will spread just like the anger, and as it infects me I will pass it on to the next person. Like the zombie virus.

I took this picture after a glorious old woman in a 15 year old
hand knit sweater told me I "look very poetic." I felt her
words in my bones.

In the last few years, I have stuck to my same haircut of the half shave, letting the "long" part of my hair grow. And now it's longer than it has been in my whole life. I can actually put my hair in a real bun without using fake hair! My hair stays back with only 2 bobby pins!!! That would have been a useful skill in my ballet days. Oh well. Kaya is having the opposite problem I had as a ballerina, her hair is so long an straight, I'm not sure how to get it to stay in a bun! One of the things I have felt changing is my relationship with myself. I've always been a silly dresser, holding very little regard for social beauty standards and modern concepts of beauty. But a lot of that always came from a place of "i'm not pretty anyway so why bother?" But now, I feel pumped on myself sometimes. I'm better at finding clothes I like, despite whats trendy or whatever. I really like this version of my haircut for the first time in a long time. I've been way more consistent about exercise and self care lately too. I notice my body really hurts when I'm not following my work out routine. I've always hated the idea of working out, but I've also learned how to embrace my likes and dislikes and not let that weird 90s sell-out vibe control my life choices.

I think one of the major changes in my life has been accepting that this is who I am and not even I can change it. So I'm not perfect, but there is a lot of love and life in my soul to share, it's time to stop getting in my own way.

Sometimes, my car won't start. But I've learned how to that the 3 tube thingies off and spray the chemical tool into the square hole and reattach all the tubes and then my car will start! Yay doing stuff!

One Woman's Gathering.

I had the most amazing walk this afternoon. A dear friend took the kids to the movies and I walked the ocean. I parked at my favorite trail head and walked to Virgin Creek to watch the surfers. Mariee Sioux in one ear and the bird song and gentle pounding of Mama Ocean in the other. I sat and listened to her voice for a long while, her music speaks to my soul in such a deep feeling way. I took out the music and listens to ocean and sent my roots deep down into Mama Earth and my branches and leaves as far up into The Sky as they could go. We exist in the middle place between Sky and Earth, a sacred place. I could hear it singing to my heart. I kept listening in one ear to Mariee and one ear to the ocean and walked back along the wave line, my feet soaking in the waves, my skirt tied and untying in each new surge. I walked back to my car bare foot and felt the Earth under me. Getting back into my car and finishing my errands has been like floating. I had just been dancing in the waves and woods and now I'm in Safeway dealing with banking shit. 

It is such an amazing blessing to live in this amazing, beautiful, sacred place. I am honored to call this place my home. 

Flowers

She helped my mom put together this glorious arrangement of spring flowers all found in the area around our home. 

And some flowers are for the forest. We were recently blessed with over an inch of rain! So many wild flowers burst open to the sun light! I simply love this place. This year, I will learn more about the plants we grow in our garden and in this beautiful patch of forest. 

A walk thru the yarden

The first trillium came up today. 

New sage buds are out. 

The chocolate mint from Amy is coming back nicely. I'm almost out of the last batch I dried in the winter time. 

Crazy amounts of lemon balm along the walk way. But it's being eaten by something...?

Our garden is doing amazing things. 

"Captain Hook!"

Pictures from this week, and 3 lessons

When one finds oneself without a car and places to go, one walks. 

When ones hose gets a hole in it, one might water 2 beds. 

When one weaves ones web below the flowering plum tree, one catches petals, not flies. 

More Twisted Willow Fiber...

I've been selling handspun yarn at the Mendocino Yarn Shop and I'm going to be teach my first drop spindle class there! I'm still reluctant to post more things to etsy, my camera phone simply doesn't capture the colors well enough. I'm calling my yarn Twisted Willow Fiberworks, and I've changed my blog address accordingly. I'm really nervous about teaching a class, but it'll be fun. Here are some pictures of some yarn.

Dye Workshop with Nancy Finn

Over this last weekend I got to take a dye workshop with Nancy Finn of Chasing Rainbows Dyeworks. It was quite an eye opening experience. I wasn't prepared for how difficult it would be to find the "right" colors. I don't even know what that means! I took the Second workshop first and skipped the First workshop, the one where you learn about the color wheel and make a sample book of colors. I'm really really in to this color thing, so in a few days, I'm going to start another fundraiser to take the first workshop. Even though I went into the workshop thinking I knew what I wanted, what colors I was going to try and achieve, when I actually sat down with the dye liquid, all my wants got confused and flew away. The results are, I think, amazing. I'm spinning the silk we did the first day, which I thought was going to be awful, but now I'm spinning it and I love it. Love. One of the harder parts of the whole thing was dyeing the the fiber I have left over from Helen, my first and most inspirational spinning teacher. I've been holding on to some of that stuff for years, in its natural colors. The color has inspired me to spin is, which is I think, what she would have wanted.

This is the silk dyed the first day in class. This is absolutely not what I was going for, but I love it!

Day 1 and morning of day 2. I've gotten pink down, K will be so pleased.

The purple is about half the merino/mohair blend I did over the weekend, and all that blue is the alpaca/mohair blend I got from Helen a few years ago. 

Lunch day 2, I realized I hadn't brought enough of my stash to take up a whole day. This is the whole class at lunch when I rushed home, grabbed what I had left behind and rushed back. Yay! 

This was a fun experiment... I spun both of these, on the left is a single spun grey Corriedale and on the right is a 2ply out of the (purple, above) mohair merino. I put them both in the same tray and lay them out together and painted them the same colors, and they look so different. Duh, though... they were totally different colors to start out with, plus, the way they each are spun totally reflects light differently... any way, those will be photographed again in better light and posted for sale in my etsy. someday. eventually.

One of the pink (surprise!) braids was commandeered by K who has possessed a fascination with the drum carder since it came into our house. So, I showed her how to separate the braid by color, then... we referred to the latest issue of Ply Magazine for the article Lacey (MoonRover... mmmm MoonRover...) wrote about how to card striped batts. Somewhere in the middle we snapped the band, and while waiting for it to cool, K became distracted by some dinosaur something and went off to play with Z.

Spinning the silk outside between rain drizzles and 10 second storms. 

The alpaca/mohair blend will be the primary fiber in a thank you sweater I'm making for my brother. When I took the spinning class awhile ago, he drove all the way here (3ish hours) to watch the kids for a day. Then, last weekend, while I was at the dye workshop, the family went to visit him, and he took the kids on a "playground crawl" while my parents were at costco. He deserves a sweater. The next step is find a suitable blend fiber to stretch this out enough for the whole project. 

So It's A Thing...

Starting in about a week, I will have handspun yarns, hand knits, and small woven items for sale in an Etsy shop called TwistedWillowFiberWork.

I'm really excited to be offering the things I love to make to people far away. It isn't perfect, at all, but each thing is I make is made because I love doing it. Even (especially) the projects that frustrate me and make me feel all thumbs leave me feeling a whole lot better at the end. When spinning yarn I hope someone else will knit with, I always hope whoever gets it loves working with the yarn as much as I loved working with the fiber. I hope whoever receives the final hat, or shawl, or monster, will feel all the love that went into it.

In some Yarn Harlot post years ago, she wrote that knit wear is like love armor, it wraps you in love and keeps you safe. Handspun knitwear is even stronger. Every level of love put into something shows in the end result. I don't want people to just buy my yarn because they love it, I want people to buy it, and love it, and pass it on with love, or keep it with love. 

Yarn is very much like love. Knitwear is very much like love armor.

But really I'm totally scared of bad reviews because all I have to take pics with is my iPhone.

Best Dog Ever

So, because of all the talk of these August meteorite showers, I got the romantic idea into my head that I would wake Bean in the middle of the night to watch shooting stars in this mother-daughter bonding moment. I shook her gently, "my love! Let's go watch shooting stars!" She stretched out and curled her toes into her dog's fur and mumbled, "mommy, I'm sick." And her dog licked her toes and they went back to sleep. I went out to the hot tub and saw four clear and bright shooting stars. 

Some Stuff. (with pictures)

This is 8 ounces of Navajo Churro singles waiting to be dyed different colors then ply'd with the other 16oz I still have to spin. Yay. 

This gorgeous thing came home with me recently. Yay. This is a Cowichan (Indian Head) Spinner on an old Singer sewing machine base. It spins suuuuper chunky yarn and since the bobbin is the most jumbo thing I've ever seen, I think this will make a phenomenal plying wheel. 

I use it as a table for my loom... and coffe and knitting and......

Farmer's market and Eat Mendocino (if you're into food sustainability you should totally google Eat Mendocino) LOVE!!! 

We've done tons of exploring this summer. Many car trips and many many walks. No matter the weather, these guys are pretty much almost game for whatever their crazy momma dreams up. 

Like hitting the Sand Dunes on the coldest, most overcast day in July. They had a blast and I knit. It was a win win. 

Awesome. 'Nuff said. 

A homesteaders old canning room. Creeeepyyyy

My latest knitting project, my beloved Cowichan, and Great Mustaches. 

To be continued.