The Ramblings and Wanderings

Archive for the ‘Arts & Crafts’ Category

I always thought that crochet was invented by an ADD woman, being one myself.

Once upon a time, long ago, probably in France, a woman with undiagnosed Attention Deficit Disorder was puttering around her cottage. Doing much but getting nothing done, of course.

In fact she was very busily working hard at trying to find the key to her chest full of yarn (and other odds and ends that had found their way into the chest). She tore the whole cottage apart and simply couldn’t find it anywhere. She did, however, find one of her long lost knitting needles in the process. Distracted by the find, she looked about for the other kitting needle. Alas she couldn’t find that either. (For the record, the key to the chest had wandered off to the barn and the other knitting needle was out in the garden having spent part of the summer holding up a young bean stalk.)

Suddenly remembering what she had been doing a few minutes before, our heroine return to her chest. Using whatever she happened to have in her hand, the single knitting needle, she was able to pry open the chest. Happily she dug through the disorganized tangle of yarn within. Unhappily, it seemed as though all her other knitting needles had also vanished (who know where they wound up) and the last remaining one was now bent at one end.

Thinking she ought to run to the market to buy more needles before winter came, and perhaps a few other items as well, she threw on her cloak and walked out the door. Into a snow storm! Oh no, winter had started and she hadn’t gotten around to knitting warm woolly socks for her family yet!

Somewhat panicked, our heroine went back inside her home and paced about. Her husband and sons would return from the fields soon and be very cold, when they found that she still hadn’t made them socks to keep their feet warm she would be berated and hollered at for certain.

So she took up her single, bent, needle and started to desperately mess around with her wool. After much cursing and swearing, and putting that creative, think-outside-the-box, mind to work she invented the art of crochet!

The End

Prayer/meditation shawls are worn in many faiths, you may have heard of Christian women making them for people who are down on their luck, or seen Jews wearing them while in mourning. Buddhists and Hindus wear them as well. You find something similar to these all over the world and in history.

I’ve wanted to make one for myself for years now. The idea was to make something I could wrap myself in during ritual, mediation, spell work and most importantly, shamanic work.

Cloaks and robes are fun and all. I like them, I like the feeling of wearing them, the idea of dressing like the ancestors I honour. I like having ritual or magickal garb. But still, they feel something like playing dress up to me. I like to wear them at a ritual with others, I find they encourage me to get up and dance and clap and chant. Depending on which ones I wear they can help me feel more light hearted or elegant or sorcererous.

However, robes and cloaks don’t help me enter into trance states, they don’t whisper of the otherside to me. They don’t make me feel like a shaman or Hedgewitch. They are also not very practical. It’s silly to throw on a ritual robe to make incense.

I find most Pagan-y ritual garb to not be very comfortable to tromp through the woods in, climb a tree, and sit in it all night in trance. I have a cloak that is soft, warm and light, like a blanket. But it is also volumous and long and deep hooded. This is great in full-on pagan ritual, snuggling before the fire at fest and such. Yet it just doesn’t quite work when I’m tromping around an alpine meadow digging up St. John’s wort.

One thing that has found its way into my spiritual wardrobe is head coverings, such as scarves and hats and headbands. They make me feel more priestess-like. They also act as an important reminder for me. You see, my hair is perhaps my best feature, my greatest source of beauty and physical pride. It’s soft, curly, long and usually dyed some shade of red, bright red. My hair is very attractive and also does a damned good job of making limp haired women jealous. Covering it in rituals, rite, and workings reminds me that the Craft and Spirituality I practice is not about my ego, nor is it about impressing other people.

Shamanic practitioners often have costumes, something they wear only when doing specific practices. Such as otherworld work, healings, or calling on specific spirits and energies. I decided a couple of years ago that what I wanted as a major part of my shamanic costume was something I could wrap around myself, a prayer shawl. Combined with my favourite head covering that hides most of my hair and part of my face, I feel this is (a pretty good start) for a (journeywoman?) Hedgewitch.

As I said, this is something I’ve been wanting for years. Yet, I have been putting it off. I wasn’t ready to embrace what I wanted my prayer shawl to be, wasn’t ready to make it and wear it in front of people. I knew in my heart what I wanted, but it took time to come to terms with it.

I’m sure many of you when thinking “shamanic prayer shawl” are picturing something very natural, organic. Something made of homespun cotton, linen or even leather. After all do we not teach that natural fibres are best? Of course we do, because they are! Being a very Nature-based practitioner, someone who has a bit of a reputation as a Witch who prefers to live hermit-like out in the woods somewhere, you’d think any prayer shawl I made would be %100 organic, all natural and brown … maybe green. Probably fibres made from wool I got off a sheep I raised myself, right?

Wrong.

I tried to want something all natural and beige. I even spent part of last summer making friends with a fibre artist and Quaker lady who lived near me. I tried very hard to want my shawl to be natural fibres and hairs, hand dyed, home spun, with leather and bone embellishments. I just couldn’t. So I kept putting it off and putting it off.

Let me get back to my ritual robes for a moment. I have two. One is made of pale green linen strips woven together, complete with frayed ends. It looks very “Witch who lives in a hut in the woods”-ish. It’s loose and comfortable and witch-y.

The other is altogether different, that’s my “temple robe”. The bottom layer is of expensive, midnight black princess satin, the top layer of high quality black cotton eyelet material. The bloody thing cost me over a hundred dollars to make. Yup, that’s right. Oh, and did I mention the neck-line that plunges almost to my belly button? It’s sexy, sultry, magickal, dangerous, ceremonial and dark, dark, dark. For the kind of woman who spends most of her time in whatever is good for the garden and bought at a thrift store, it is a very special treat. I am not the kind of woman who gets taken out to the opera, if you know what I mean. This robe is not about showing of my cleavage but creating a frame of mind totally different from the nature-y and green robe.

My cloaks tell a similar story, one is a light and soft green plaid flannel, the other is purple velvet.

Nature Witch vs Temple Witch, if you will. Summer and Winter.

I didn’t want my prayer shawl to be either, not homespun linen nor slippery satin. Not meant to help me enter into a different facet of my personality or slip into a certain kind of Witch-y or Pagan-y archetype. No, this shawl is meant to be ME. Just me. It will speak to the people who see it and they can make their own judgements, they will. But I find when I slip through the Hedge and walk the roads less travelled I am in some fundamental way laid bare. Stripped of masks and trappings and totally myself. It is not safe to hold onto illusions of who you are when dealing with the unseen and otherworldly.

It takes courage to go against the grain. To break stereotypes and to do not as what will be accepted by others but to do what is best for you, then to wear it on your back for all to see. I`ve been teased, mocked and downright insulted before for not doing it “right`in the eyes of my fellow Pagans and Witches. It might seem that going against the grain is easy for me, but its not. It can be quite painful in fact. It’s not easy being a misfit Witch, an outsider even among outsiders. Some days I grow weary of it, heart achingly weary, and oh so terribly lonely.

Part of me wanted to make the expected shawl. Something I could show to people and they would nod their heads and say “Yup, that’s a nice shamanic costume you’ve got there”.

However, I’m committed to making it the way that suits me best.

My shawl will be made of 60% wool and 40% acrylic inexpensive slightly fuzzy yarn. It will be ratty looking and full of holes. Haphazardly crocheted like an oversized, insane doily. It will have fringe and tassels and random threads hanging off of it. Beads, bells and gods know what else will dangle from it, making me jingle. It will be roughly rectangular but not perfectly so. It will be in a riot of colours, many of which will clash. Already it is shades of blue, green, purple and orange.

And it sparkles, that’s right, sparkly and shiny.

And it will be mine, and I will wear it with pride.

The Walking the Hedge 2010 Calendar is ready to be ordered and shipped!

Created by the gang at the Hedge, this scrapbook style calendar is a beautiful work of art printed on recycled paper.

It features fun facts, Pagan & other holidays, special dates, lunar phases, poetry, art, photography and much more!

You pay a $23.00 donation to Walking the Hedge (Canadian dollars, which includes shipping)

All proceeds go to the cost of the calendar and the cost of webhosting for the Hedge

Once you order, please contact Juniper by Email with your order number, how many calendars you ordered and your shipping information.

You can find some more previews of the Calendar in the Gallery, keep checking as more previews will be posted.

We will try our best to have it shipped to you in time for Yule/Christmas!

Just so you guys know, when you order the calendar it will go to a email called pugglesforu@hotmail.com to Susan Davies … Susan Davies is my Mom. We share a paypal account and have a shared bank acocunt that is attached to it, so don’t worry when you see that name!

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to check out a new background and more!