Who Are Your Song Bearers?

Now, I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing hallelujah
--Leonard Cohen

Phix's Curiosity: what sparks my interest

Watch this space to see what's sparked my interest this week.  A random grab bag of delights!

Once upon a time, there were no lights but candles and lamps at night.  There was no tv, cellphones, video games in leisure time... People found ways to enjoy that time and one of the ways they did that was music.  Once upon a time, music was a community thing, not reserved for the stage, or the school auditorium - it was participatory & shared in families, and with friends. 

Who are the song-holders in communities now?  How/does music pass down from generation to generation? Songs are sort of like stories - what are we missing when they disappear? And more importantly - what are we missing out on within our communities when we no longer share participatory music within and across our communities?  And by participatory - I don't just mean participation-by-receiving.  Going to a concert is receipt of music, passive participation in the act of creation.  

I love participating in the act of creating music with other people.  Alone it's... a little hollow, to be honest.  Though sometimes, late at night, alone in my car, with my kids in the car, sometimes just gonna sing along with whatever is on, or whatever's in my head.  When I'm playing with others, I don't care if the people I'm playing with are particularly good. I care very deeply that in the moment they are enthusiastic and authentic about participating with their whole heart with joy.  Broken strings, missed lines, missed notes, messed up harmonies, whatever. The music, like water, flows around it and keeps moving. 

It seems like what I hear these days is, 'oh, I... haven't played in a while... I've lost a lot. I don't play as well as I used to'  Yeah.  I feel that.  Me too. And. Come play with me. We can be joyfully terrible together.  

I miss having people to play with. On the upside, kiddo #1 wants to learn guitar this summer.  I am trying to figure out if there's an instrument I can be terrible at with her.  I guess... worst case, this is the summer I try to pick up fiddle...

But... open invitation. Wanna sing some songs? I'm game.  Seriously.
  

Medusa's Garden

When you need every one and everything around you to just stop.

The world needs to slow down so I can get my song on. This seems to be the year that I'm finding a lot of joy in the arts & crafts.  Spinning, weaving, and music all day? Yes please. Alas.  That's not the way the world works. 

Boundaries.  Setting down the workaday, making time and saving energy for the other stuff.  That's... a project... Creating space. To do the important stuff... 
 

Ariadne's Yarn: playing with threads

What I'm up to with fiber and possibly how mythology and stories all tie together.

Just a few more rows (COMMITMENT) on the scarf now.  And I wrapped up the pretty blue stuff and started working on some natural blue-faced leicester - it's so soft.  It's going to be a beautiful something some day! :)
 

Mythic Librarian: the art of arranging a life 

Thoughts on ontology and ways to organize a life.

 In my work life, there's been a bit of politics.  It's the nature of trying to coordinate many people's frameworks into one that works together.  People's world views are how they've mapped their mental models to the world.  When that mental model is challenged, the resistance can be... significant. Asking people to recognize the flexibility of their maps is always an exercise in tact and diplomacy.  There's a reason that ontology has its own branch of philosophy!   

I don't mean to come off sounding like I'm whining about it - this is one of the things I generally really enjoy about my work. Frameworks, ontologies, perspectives.  I'm getting better as I get older about trying to make sure the folks I'm working with understand that their perspective is (probably) valid... from their perspective.. but that it fits into this other perspective in *this* way. 
 
With love, and structure, and organization, and curiosity - may Ariadne's ball of yarn guide you through the labyrinth safely until next time!

--Susan
 

Emergence and Wraps

“It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.”
― Erma Bombeck

Phix's Curiosity: what sparks my interest

Watch this space to see what's sparked my interest this week.  A random grab bag of delights!

The mushrooms are back! I saw a tiny little Amanita panthera that had been knocked over by some oblivious soul in front of our house and a whole forest of little mushrooms in the shrubs at work. I'm looking forward to seeing what else starts popping up! Time to go for walks  around the campus! 
  

Medusa's Garden

When you need every one and everything around you to just stop.

Boundaries. Boundaries, boundaries. Boundaries. Reflecting all the bits and parts that have become attached to things. Reclaiming space. Rewiring the brain and stepping  into new frameworks that fit better... Some weeks, it's how it goes...
 

Ariadne's Yarn: playing with threads

What I'm up to with fiber and possibly how mythologyand stories all tie together.

I think I'm over the part where I was stuck on this scarf! It's still a commitment to do a row, but I haven't had to tear it back you... Granted, no guarantees what happens next time I pick it up but you know, details!

I wore my big white wrap to work Thursday. Normally it's not something I'd do, but I needed to wrap myself in something so completely *me*. 

Mythic Librarian: the art of arranging a life 

Thoughts on ontology and ways to organize a life.

Short thoughts because kiddo #2 was up until 1:30ayem doing homework... which means it's later than that now.  I've been asleep on the couch for hours and sleep... more sleep... is calling me away. When I try to open my eyes, they feel full of sleepy sand. Note to self: brush teeth before crashing out! LOL! 

Sometimes arranging a life means working around the schedules of others and allowing things to happen and just be what they are as they emerge.  And it will be all still be ok. 
 
With love, and structure, and organization, and curiosity - may Ariadne's ball of yarn guide you through the labyrinth safely until next time!

--Susan

Avebury Wool & Cha-Chas

Phix's Curiosity: what sparks my interest

Watch this space to see what's sparked my interest this week.  A random grab bag of delights!

Cars. I'm realizing the car I have is ~15 years old. I'm not getting a new one, not yet, but realistically, considering car life spans, I'm starting to think about what's next in the eventuality that's approaching.  Here's my dilemma.  I would like to get a hybrid for all the reasons. Except. I also have a strong preference for standard/manual shift. So I go back and forth with myself.  Fuel efficiency. Ability to do compression/jump starts. Fuel efficiency. Getting to manually shift gears. I dunno. It will be interesting to see which entirely pragmatic (to me) reason wins out when the time comes. In the meantime, I'm going to continue driving my current little car.  
  

Medusa's Garden

When you need every one and everything around you to just stop.

Someone on Facebook posted an tweet from Sin’Baku Ceasar that says,

"My therapist taught me to interrupt my anxious thinking with thoughts like: “What if things work out” and “What if all my hard work pays off?” 

So I’m passing that on to you wherever you are, whatever you’re leaving, or whomever you’re becoming." 

I'm kind of in love with this idea right now. I have only a few hours of having pondered this, but I'm looking forward to seeing how this works. :)
 

Ariadne's Yarn: playing with threads

What I'm up to with fiber and possibly how mythology and stories all tie together.

So I've been working on this scarf.  It's now well over 200 stitches across which means *commitment* any time I sit down to do a row.  I need to count the stitches I'm at. I... sort of lost count and the stitches ended up way off from where they should have been, so I've spent the last couple evenings frogging back six (very long) rows.  Like you do.  I re-knit my first row last night, but now I need to recount the stitches.  Even just counting the stitches is a commitment! So much commitment, so little time!  I love how in this photo, one end of it seems to be escaping like a surly craft octopus.  

On the spinning front, a friend of mine went to the UK last summer and while she was there, gathered some wool from the fields in Avebury, near Stonehenge.  She wanted to know if I'd spin it and, yes, of course I'd love that!  So while we were in Portland last weekend, we got together, had fabulous tea at the tea caboose, and arranged for a wool handoff. 

To the right is the wool before being washed (and the bits of branches and grass I've picked out of the wool).  Before being washed, it ended up being just under an ounce of wool. I'm very curious to find out what came out in the wash too!  Depending on how much dirt and lanolin there is, it can end up being nearly half the weight.  I *think* I didn't lose a full half in weight but I'm only partway through the spin, so we'll see.

After picking the grass out, I washed it three or four times, plus a rinse - I was quite pleased with how it cleaned up.  I once bought a raw fleece, the whole thing, and it took me way longer to get it cleaned up... but then, there was a lot more of it too, so as a spinner I like says, "We're all on a journey here..." 😜 

You can sort of see how brown the water is in the wash corner of the image! Gross, but not as bad as I had feared. Lower left, after it was dried, then lower right is after I carded it.  The nature of this wool is that it's turning out to be a bit of a rustic spin. The condition of wool picked out of the heath is less than optimal.  There are more nebs (little short pieces) thanI had initially anticipated would still be in the wool after carding, so I'm picking them out as I spin since they cause funny little lumps.  It's like... lumpy gravy, honestly - everything is going along nice and smooth and then there's a little lump... Is to be expected.  

This time was the first time I took it from the brushes and instead of making a rolag (a rolled batt), I ran it all through a diz and made roving out of it! That was fun.  For my diz, I used a humble washer from the hardware junk drawer and tada! Lovely roving all set to go!  It's all spinning up quite nicely & I'm looking forward to seeing how it plies and what the final yarn will look like!  So stay tuned for pictures of that next time maybe! 
 

Mythic Librarian: the art of arranging a life 

Thoughts on ontology and ways to organize a life.

Arranging a life... I find that when my anxiety spins up, I get caught in a bit of a catch-22.  As my anxiety spins up, I spend more time focusing on work, as I spend more time focusing on work, it spins my anxiety up further, and then it all sort of winds around itself and climbs into not great headspace.  These last couple of weeks, I've been too late at work. In some ways, it is nice to get the quiet time to focus after everyone has left, and on the other hand, leaving work later than 8 is... not who I aspire to be as a person anymore.  

I have always sort of done this, and am learning that acknowledging both parts and then working to find & deal with the underlying source of the anxiety is about the only way that works to resolve things. I'm part way there.  Some of the uncertainty that's causing my anxiety right now is, I think, mostly out of my hands - I can do what I can but ultimately que sera sera. 

That's not a comfortable place to be, but it seems like so much of life is hurry up and wait, work really hard and hope it pays off... all things will resolve themselves in time.  In the meantime, one small step in the right direction at a time will take one miles.  And like they say, one step forward and two steps back is a cha-cha...
 
With love, and structure, and organization, and curiosity - may Ariadne's ball of yarn guide you through the labyrinth safely until next time!

--Susan

Diversification and Keeping Busy

Phix's Curiosity: what sparks my interest

Watch this space to see what's sparked my interest this week.  A random grab bag of delights!

Apparently this week, being busy is what has kept my interest. Started out by helping a friend update her passwords, clean up her website, and set up a new website after she decided to stop working with the guy she was paying monthly to help keep her site current... Or "current" - there were quite a few things requiring updates when I got to it, certainly nothing had been done "monthly". 

Work is always busy - changes ahoy, like you do in the enterprise world. I think it brings quite a bit of welcome opportunity with it, and I'm curious to see what it brings. 

And just generally, after things feeling sort of stuck for a while, they are now starting to move and I think it will be getting busier before it slows down. Which is great for the curious, as there will be all sorts of new things to explore. :)  
  

Medusa's Garden

When you need every one and everything around you to just stop.

That said - when things get really busy - it's important to take some time out to breathe and just be too.  Right now it's looking like my rest and relaxation will be good, but not tending so much to my introvert.  Which means I need to get a little more serious than I have been lately about carving out time to meditate, to set aside external obligations in order to tend to internal obligations. Now - to also take my own advice!  
 

Ariadne's Yarn: playing with threads

What I'm up to with fiber and possibly how mythology and stories all tie together.

I am part way through a scarf.  I have reached the point where a row... is a *commitment*.  Knitters know what I mean by that.  I'm one of those knitters who, when I'm adding/decreasing, needs to count each row to verify I added/decreased the right number ofstitches and when I get above about 50, I find I have to count a couple of times.  

Are there any numbers or sets of numbers you miss?  For whatever reason, I often start getting mixed up around the high 70s - sometimes I forget the 80s entirely... I think my brain just gets bored of counting and loses interest.  Someday maybe it will figure out that I'm going to count until I get a reasonable semblance of what I was trying to get to... 

In other news, I plied the ounce of silk hankies I'd been spinning. I used a spindle to spin it up and... Sometimes I have good intentions to ply on the spindle too, especially if I'm doing a Navajo ply (triple ply by creating continuous loops), but... just.  Give me a wheel to ply. 


 

Mythic Librarian: the art of arranging a life 

Thoughts on ontology and ways to organize a life.

In terms of arranging a life, I've been thinking about the need to evaluate and re-evaluate and take new approaches on things.  It's easy sometimes to get trapped in a cycle of working with the same people, in the same way, for years.  This leads to a comfort in approach, but also familiarity that doesn't lend itself well to 'beginner's mind'. 

There is something to be said for diversification. As Heinlein said, "Specialization is for insects." We should be able to do many things - work across many circles - have many interests. It keeps ones' practices fresh, and also helps keep perspective on what's going on elsewhere.   
 
With love, and structure, and organization, and curiosity - may Ariadne's ball of yarn guide you through the labyrinth safely until next time!

--Susan

Knitting And Spinning Olympics

“Anyway, it doesn't matter how much, how often, or how closely you keep an eye on things because you can't control it. Sometimes things and people just go. Just like that.” 
― Cecelia Ahern

Phix's Curiosity: what sparks my interest

Watch this space to see what's sparked my interest this week.  A random grab bag of delights!

Been watching the Olympics this week.  I don't really follow sports, but I always seem to get sucked into the Olympics. There's just something about people doing what they love at the top of their form that is really engaging to watch in a way that I don't get from professional sports, but I'm not so engaged in any particular sport enough to follow them year over year.  There's something about the pageantry of the proceedings as well.  
  

Medusa's Garden

When you need every one and everything around you to just stop.

2018 is really gearing up.  I think at this point I'm looking towards the end of April for a moment to slow down and catch my breath.  In the meantime, the name of the game is finding moments in between everything going on in order to recenter, regroup, and find that calm in the eye of the storm.  Gonna be checking in with my breath a lot, I think! :)
 

Ariadne's Yarn: playing with threads

What I'm up to with fiber and possibly how mythology and stories all tie together.

I'm... being ridiculous. I have three different projects going on right now and eyeing this beautiful new roving that I want to dig into! This is a merino-bamboo blend and so very very soft!  I love this color combination too.  The colorway is called 'Golden Dawn' and the pinks and goldens and streaks of red really nail the colors that dawns can bring.  I mean, or so I'd assume knowing what sunsets look like! 😜

Then there's the silk hankies and a new spindle. I always say I'll never do silk hankies again and somehow every three years, I forget why I said that and buy more... and then I remember why I swear I won't buy anymore.  It's maybe not quite *that* bad - it forces me out of the easy long draw that I find so comfortable. With silk hankies I usually end up mostly pre-drafting each of them so that I have a half chance of getting a semi-consistent size.  And semi-consistent is about as close as I get with these, pretty much working in laceweight with them.  I love this new spindle - it's beautifully balanced, spins forever, and is a gorgeous delight to work with. I'll still probably do the plying on the wheel - it just goes more smoothly and I have a wheel at hand. Some day I ought to get a lazy kate for spindles... In the meantime, I think this will get a Navajo ply (basically a single thread, chained/looped to make a triple ply) & we'll see how I deal with getting it off the spindle. Maybe this calls for an unorthodox use of the swift... I've got a ways to go so plenty of time to ponder!

Still working on a knitting project *and* a weaving project. No new pictures of those though - sometimes it just seems like it looks sort of the same at this stage of things. 
 

Mythic Librarian: the art of arranging a life 

Thoughts on ontology and ways to organize a life.

Yes. This is coming out late!  I totally spaced that this was waiting to be written until I was going to bed last night and it dawned on me... Oh!  Today was Thursday!  

Part of organizing a life is the recognition that at times there are things that will just slide because... that's just how it is. Not much slides in my life.  Once a mentor of mine reminded me that it's ok to not be perfect All The Time because it lets other people know you're human.  So... this week I'm human.  The go-go-go-go that will be with me until later in April means we may see me being more human for a bit, but y'know what?  That's ok. If a newsletter slides, a newsletter slides and I promise to get to it! 
 
With love, and structure, and organization, and curiosity - may Ariadne's ball of yarn guide you through the labyrinth safely until next time!

--Susan

Epistemology, Ontology, and Spinning a Yarn

It’s all been said better before. If I thought I had to say it better than anybody else, I’d never start. Better or worse is immaterial. The thing is that it has to be said; by me; ontologically. We each have to say it, to say it our own way. Not of our own will, but as it comes out through us. Good or bad, great or little: that isn’t what human creation is about. It is that we have to try; to put it down in pigment, or words, or musical notations, or we die.
― Madeleine L'Engle, Spinning a Yarn

New year, new experiments, ahoy! 
 

Phix's Curiosity: what sparks my interest

Watch this space to see what's sparked my interest this week.  A random grab bag of delights!

We're onboarding some new folks at work.  In the course of discussions, some of the things that we got to discussing was how people scan content and the various ways people's brains process incoming information.  Why icons/colors/etc can lend meaning and when they contribute to information overload.  How do we convey meaning through words and help people more easily interpret what's important?  This is kind of endlessly fascinating to me. 

So we talked through how sometimes people usebolded texttodraw the eyeto theconcept wordslike I'll do in this paragraph.  We also talked about how part of the reasonicons work so wellis that youdon't spend time sounding out the wordas you're getting to theconceptual meaningbeing conveyed and so itbypasses the language centerof the brain and goes straight to the meaning center (wheeeee!semioticsin practice!). 

We also talked through what levels of detail people want - often execs just want the one line summary, while other people can be extremely detail oriented. How do you create content that helps the people who want the action item/takeaway and then they're done *and* the people who want all the gory detail of the content in the same document?  And further, how do you deal with subjective stylistic/editorial differences while enabling reuse of information across multiple documents? 

So, if you ever wondered what my day job was like... there's a tiny bit of it!  That's probably enough epistemology for now!
  

Medusa's Garden

When you need everyone and everything around you to stop

This one will be short this time - part of self care is knowing where and when to draw boundaries.  Here's the thing, and I've said this before, as have others - self care doesn't happen in isolation.  If there's no community that is available to you, that supports your absence, self care is significantly more complicated.  The ability to withdraw from regular life for rest and relaxation is a tremendous privilege.  How does your community support you in finding space to rest and recover?
 

Ariadne's Yarn: playing with threads

What I'm up to with fiber and possibly how mythology and stories all tie together.

I've been bitten by the spinning bug again.  Not that I'm not ever interested, but I definitely have years where I spin more than others.  This year, so far, feels like a year with lots of fiber potential.  And more spinning means more knitting and more weaving. I hope! :)  

To that end, I'm trying something new - I'm following along with the Instagram #spin15aday2018challenge - which is to say spin (at least) 15 minutes a day, every day in 2018.  So far so good!  From yoga and other things I know that often it's prioritizing the first 10 minutes that's the hardest part and once you have settled into a ten minute commitment, it's easy to keep going.  Getting over the inertia mountain is 95% of the battle!

So far this year, I've finished on the tahkli spindle the 0.8 ounce of neon green merino that was bought for one or the other of the girls many years ago & I was "being good because it was theirs to spin and not mine, even if they weren't getting to it." I was experimenting with the tahkli last summer to see if I could get a different and more consistent spin than I'd been able to figure out so far with it and that was the wool that was lying around and I looked at one of them preparing to head off to college, and the other preparing to head into high school and decided... whelp, they had their chance! I'm gong to take care of this and if they want more, we'll cross that bridge when we get there! 

I've also made a good dent in the 17 ounces of merino-silk blend having spun about half of the roving at this point. All the pretty green things! Where the girls' merino was a really bright solid green, this one ranges from really dark forest greens to mossy greens, to almost silvery white of undyed silk.  I like spinning this type of roving from the fold to get variegated colors, rather than trying make the color consistently blended - I feel like it doesn't show off the colors as well and they always feel sort of muddy when all of the colors just get muddled together. 

In other fiber news, I was looking at my stash of white, undyed wool and I think I'm going to throw it on the loom and make a wrap with it, so hopefully next newsletter, I'll have an update on that.  We'll see if I manage to get it warped tomorrow night and dress the loom on Saturday or Monday, I guess!  I have three different batches of white wool, so it will take some planning to do.  One batch of it is either a cotswold or blue-faced leicester or... something. My cousin bought it for me from a friend.  The bag said one thing, she said another because her friend doesn't raise cotswold and now I can't remember and... y'know - it's lovely wool, it'll be delightful.  One is entirely a mystery wool.  And then the third is white merino.  

All the fiber work I do is basically a gigantic experiment.  I do it for the joy in process and try not to focus overly much on outcome. Not that I don't frog knitting or unweave and reweave and whatnot, but "it's the journey not the destination."  So - we'll see how it goes!
 

Mythic Librarian: the art of arranging a life 

Thoughts on ontology and ways to organize a life.

Ontology - the branch of philosophy that looks at entities, if they exist, and what their relationship to other entities are.  Because apparently I am turning into the philosopher-king. 

JK - I've always been like this!

How do you arrange a life so that you are in right relation with the things around you?  Librarians spend a lot of time identifying and organizing things.  You wouldn't know it looking at my coffee table or my tea and spice drawers, BUT.  One must leave a little chaos in one's life. Moderation in all things including moderation and all.  

A really significant part of organization (and this is where I feel like there's a solid contingent of my profession who misses this point) is prioritization.  A record in the Library of Congress catalog has around 1000 fields worth of potential information about any given thing that could be documented.  Of these, only about 9 are used on most everything (title, author, subject, year of publication, publisher, and a few others), and then there is a very very long tail.  When people go to organize their lives in relation to the entities in their lives, it's sort of the same way - everyone has slightly different priorities but there is an endless set of ways in which to organize all the things and a really long tail. And tale. ;) 

My coffee table is my workspace, a document of what things are in action or need action.  From my bullet journal that sits perched overlooking it, to the papers I need to file, destroy, mail, or schedule, to books I'm reading, electronic devices, various office supplies, and candles for when I stop moving and just need to sit in silence and gaze while I listen to the sound of my own breath.

What is important to me is close to me - or at least a representative.  The loom is closer to me than the spinning wheel, but the spindle is right behind my head, representatively.  This is what is jokingly known in the library world as proximity filing (i.e., most important closest).  It is also a little bit horizontal filing (in that there are things stacked on top of other things, categorized, of course).  The books under my coffee table are vertically oriented, as Maude intended.  

Physical space is but one of many ways that one organizes a life.  The stories we tell are also a way that we organize a life.  What stories and meanings we assign to the entities also establishes them in relationship with us.  

How we organize our time is another.  And while you will be receiving this at 10am (unless I mess up again and send it out at 10pm!), it is currently a bit past 1am as I'm writing this. I must shift on to the next part of this day!
 
With love, and structure, and organization, and curiosity - may Ariadne's ball of yarn guide you through the labyrinth safely until next time!

--Susan

Happy New Year!

“The spider's web: She finds an innocuous corner in which to spin her web. The longer the web takes, the more fabulous its construction. She has no need to chase. She sits quietly, her patience a consummate force; she waits for her prey to come to her on their own, and then she ensnares them, injects them with venom, rendering them unable to escape. Spiders – so needed and yet so misunderstood.” 
― Donna Lynn Hope

It snowed over break!  Almost just the right amount... it was slippery getting up the hill, but we made it.  I'm delighted to say we're back to classic PNW drizzle & drips.  I worked through the break so didn't get as much time to do year-end wrap ups and reflection like I like to do, which left me trying to cram a bunch of stuff in the night before I went back to work.  I'm usually a night owl, but night owl + denial that there's work in the morning again already is... not a great way to get the most sleep... 

Year-end/year-ahead reflections are something I've done for about a decade.  It takes a bunch of different formats.  One of my year-end things is, honestly just getting into the holiday thing and taking joy in the various traditions I and my family have picked up along the way.  Another is a goofy list of around 48 questions that I answer every year.  The same questions, over and over.  Did anyone get married, die, have a baby... Did you travel somewhere new, did you travel internationally... Did you change jobs, change your hair, change your life... Some years I go back through all of them to see how the threads all weave together, and some years I just answer the questions.  It's interesting to see the evolution over time. 

Related to this is the year-ahead, but I don't always use the looking back as a springboard to look forward -- I don't actually think time always works that way. I don't believe what happened in the past predicates what happens in the future.  It provides some trend lines, but there are so many variables, that you never know and could end up with a surprise upend.  It's good to plan for the future, and control what you can control, but in the end, the future will unfold how it unfolds.  Not saying don't try - life is about trying.  Just - anticipate that there will be things that you simply could not have predicted or planned for.

I look-ahead in a couple of ways.  One is to just go through and list in my haphazard journal all the things that I think I'd like to do.  Where I'd like to prioritize and de-prioritize my time and attention.  Often this is my list of good intent.  An eight hour day plus one to two hours of commute time has a way of taking a big ol' bite out of my physical and emotional energy to deal with anything else.  I'm fortunate in that if I have to let someone else be my boss, at the moment, I'm doing something that suits me well. And I know that working for a big company that I'm entirely disposable. I'm never sure what's worse - to be disposable or trapped because "indispensable."  I aspire to other things though.  It's awkward territory to try to figure out something when you don't have a close model for 'how to'. Like - the life I saw modeled is sort of the life I have figured out how to have. And it's good. Aaaaand.  There is that part of me that feels the rat race, and... it makes me tired.  So, one of the things I want to do this year is continue to explore things that make me happy.  This is one of those things. Spinning is another of those things. Yoga is another of those things. Stories and mythologies, another. And so on.  There is so much that I want to do and time comes at a premium. 

Besides my list of good intentions, I do a card spread.  I have all sorts of decks that I've collected over the years. From traditional tarot to odd Jungian decks to oracle cards.  I know - that thing I said about the future up there, right? You can't predict it? It's true - and that's not how I use cards.  The way cards work for me, is they make me revisit my assumptions about the stories I'm telling myself about things.  Reality is subjective. It's like the story about the blind men who find an elephant and get into a major squabble with each other because each has only had a partial experience of a different part of the poor beast. Using cards is one way to use a different part of my brain to play with the story I'm telling myself about what's going on and seeing things from a different perspective. Often it works and I get some new insights "I hadn't thought of it that way, but this is worth considering." Sometimes, meh, not so much... because sometimes the new perspective is going to come from sitting and noodling in my head while I'm spinning, or walking, or hanging upside-down in down dog, or coloring, or out of the blue while I'm working.  

So, cards are part of my New Year's reflections. I have a Celtic Tree deck with a meditative and somewhat complex spread (which is why I only do the whole thing once a year). I've been doing this for the last 30 or so years around the New Year, looking at a matrix of storytelling perspectives about the past year, the current moment, and the upcoming year against the foundational story, the spotlight, what is being said/heard, what are the dreams (or ideals), and what are the connections that run through them. Different parts of the elephant. Different parts of the tree... And also sometimes, LOL this is so irrelevant that we're just going to move along because I'm out of evens I so can't.  If it triggers a useful insight, great. If not, that's fine too.  One of the first things my lovely therapist told me was that I didn't have to believe every story I told myself about myself. And I certainly didn't have to believe stories other people told me about me either. So I super don't have to believe the stories I find in cards unless I want to or find them useful.

All of which is quite a bit more about a thing I do than I meant to get into until it appeared. LOL!  Besides these things, there's also just taking time to feel the feels about the last year, staring at the tree, staring at candles, staring into the dying embers of a fire lit to make a room cozy while filled with all the people I love dearest in my life. Allowing the feelings of melancholy because connecting with friends & family is so often sucked away into the void of the schedule and routine of rat-raceness... that keeps a roof over my head, keeps my family fed, and helps create the elusive sense of stability that allows for the feelings of melancholy in the first place. Human brains are funny places when you start digging into them! 

I was going to write more about spinning.  There are not enough hours in the day.  A good intention is to try to spin along on instagram's #spin15challenge2018 -- spinning at least/just 15 minutes a day.  Ariel Gore says in her book Mother Trip - if something is worth doing, it's worth doing half-assed.  Ok, who can't do 15 minutes of something a day?  (Narrator: her. She was not going to spin 15 minutes that day. Mostly because that day was gone already & work was coming up and sleep is a thing, but like all things, the sun rises and it's a new day and she would try again anew... basically later today).  Like - doing something is better than nothing. 

Sometimes the thing that stops me from doing or saying something is the fear that someone will say, "who do you think you are doing THING!? There are others who do it faster/better/WAYYYbetter/knowmore/blahblahblah"  And who am I indeed?  Who cares?  I'm someone doing whatever I'm doing as only I can do it.  And maybe I'm not the bestest fastest most knowledgeable whatever whocares, I'm me. And I'm doing a thing which is, in my opinion, better than not doing a thing, even if I'm doing it however I'm doing it. Brene Brown said in a presentation, If you're not out here on the front lines with me, I don't care about your opinion. Totally on board with this.  

But back to spinning because while I've rambled enough, I'm going to say something about spinning and mythology before I stop rambling tonight.  Athena has fascinated me for a long time.  Ever since I was little and picked up a book on Greek mythology from one of those Reading is Fundamental programs.  The story of Athena and Arachne was included. Classic story warning against hubris.  Speaking of perspectives on stories and the stories we tell ourselves about reality, I have seen often enough that mythologies carry cultural values both explicit and implicit.  The explicit story in the Athena/Arachne story is that of hubris.  Turns out there was a neighboring port city near Athens, a center of significant weaving capabilities, who was a competitor to them.  The city weavers' motto was (do 🕷 you 🕸 know 🕷 where 🕸  this 🕷  is 🕸 headed 🕷 yet?) - the spider.  Which, that's a pretty straight-up explicit commercial threat too, and not so much implicit at all... I guess implicit and secret values are another story to dig into another time.  I'm going to do what I hate when others do and not provide a cite on this story tonight.  I'm sorry. It's late, I read it somewhere, and it is endless entertainment value to me to see how widely Athena & Arachne are used as internet tech names because of so many reasons (mostly the connection of tablet weaving to computers and thence to "the web"). 

So.  Happy New Year!  What do you do at the end of the year?

With love, reflection, refraction, hope for the coming year, and curiosity,
--Susan

Happy Solstice!

And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been. -- Rainer Maria Rilke

We have survived the longest night of the year!  And now the days will begin to lengthen again.  Although honestly, it never seems like the light comes back until it's a little closer to the equinox... but still and regardless -- it's the season of hibernation and the tiny seeds of light will grow, but first they need to nestle in the heart and incubate.  But  they will grow!  

What I've been thinking about a lot lately... fiber work and tradition.  Sometimes intertwined, sometimes not.  

It is the case for me that often spinning, knitting, and weaving are wonderful escapes for me.  There's something about them that anchors me to the women who came before me. It was not all that long ago that these skills were in demand because you couldn't just go somewhere and buy pre-made clothes.  And not only in demand, but matter of factly practiced because you had to get socks from *somewhere*.  I don't envy the grueling life of days gone by.  I often reflect on my fortune and privilege, and yet, there is a part of my bones, a muscle memory of working with fiber that feels right.  A connection through time to the spinners of thread, of warp and weft, of yarns fiber and tales, of labyryths, lives, and time itself.

I'm knitting the last of the fingerless gloves that go with the red and grey plaid scarf I wove, and a Santa-ish hat that I knit.  For a skill that was once so utterly necessary, it seems so... decadent now.  And  sometimes, not always, it makes me sad.  Sometimes I'm *really* glad that I don't have to knit unless I feel like it because what I really like to do is spin. Knitting (and now weaving) is what I do in order to justify buying more stuff to spin - although, I do find the process of weaving satisfying as well with the rhythm of the changing of the shed and the passing through of the shuttle. And I have the advantage that I can treat all my creations pretty much as experiments - 'what happens if I...'  I'm terrible at following patterns and recipes. Not that I don't try, but sometimes... sometimes the yarn tells me what to try just like sometimes the food tells me it needs more of something than the recipe calls for... I have patterns that I'm fond of none-the-less.  The red and grey Santa-ish hat is part of one pattern I like and part pretty much made up.  I had to frog it back once or twice when I figured out I needed to make adjustments so it would work, but work it does.  And thus it goes in my world.

When I think I wish there were a way to make a living at it, I am reminded of the weaver I saw at Folk Life every year we went for the last seven or so years.   He's retiring from weaving so much - the toll fiberwork takes on bodies is a very real thing.  More than once I've seen our local weaving and fiber supply store offer 'self care for [knitters, weavers, fiber workers] classes.  And again, I'm glad that I can do this as a joyful luxury. 

And yet and still - sometimes when I look, I can see the world knit and woven together, held together of strands of DNA, mycelium weaving the mat of the earth we walk on, trees appearing as more tightly woven together atoms than the air that swirls around them. For me, fiber work is an apt metaphor for the connectivity not only back to those who came before me, but the connectivity that connects us and the planet across the world, across the solar system, galaxy, universe.  Computers and their punchcards were born of weaving technology. Text - comes from the same roots as textiles. My (paying) job itself is interwoven with text and computers and so perhaps I am carrying on the connecting tradition of the decadent work that warms my heart, in a grand connective evolving tradition, and perhaps too, this is why fiber work resonates with me and vice versa.

That wasn't the tradition, entirely I've been thinking of, but often once you start picking at a thread, many things will come out in the unraveling of the tale... :)

The other tradition I was thinking of was that the ubiquitous "they" used to tell ghost stories and scary stories this time of year.  Andy Williams even sings of it, "There'll be parties for hosting, marshmallows for roasting, and caroling out in the snow.  There'll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago..."  It doesn't take long pondering why scary ghost stories might have been popular this time of year "long ago." Christmas as we know and celebrate it today is not a very old tradition.  One year we asked my Great-Aunt Bess what Christmas was like when she was little, "Ohhh, well... if it was a Very Good Year, I might get a very much treasured doll..."  Just the doll.  And thinking of how winters would be much darker then than now with our fancy incandescent lighting, and more dangerous with the cold, and medicine being in the states of learning we were at with it, it doesn't take long to get from that to more souls shedding this mortal coil in the winter, and thus more ghost stories, and the remembrances of those gone on.  After all, those who are remembered, live on...

And so, my solstice wish for you - may the returning light shed itself on ever increasing joys in your life and when tales are told around a dinner table long after you have joined what comes next, may you be remembered with fondness.

This is my last newsletter of this year - I'm taking next week off to weave in all my loose ends of this year and maybe, possibly, hopefully, plan some goodies for next year! 

“I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.

Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're Doing Something.

So that's my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.

Whatever it is you're scared of doing, Do it.

Make your mistakes, next year and forever.” 
― Neil Gaiman

With love, best wishes for a delightful New Year, Happy Holidays whatever you choose to celebrate, and always always always curiosity,
--Susan