Samhain; Weaving

 Samhain was low key for me this year.  All I did was carve three little turnips, then set them out to guard dishes of soul cake, milk, and whiskey.

I sat outside with them and was somehow oddly contented.
I had been wondering as October approached, if I would somehow be sad.  Halloween has always been my favorite holiday.  When I was a kid of course there was trick or treat (and my mother made our costumes).  When I was too old for that, we would set up mini haunted walk throughs to pass out candy.  As an adult, I would throw big Halloween parties.  For some 15 years I was on the team that built and ran an elaborate haunted trail at the museum.  One year we went to a remote village in southern Mexico for the true Dios de los Muertos, a magical and moving experience I will always treasure.

And now?  Nothing.  I live too far out to have trick-or-treaters.  Most events for adults involve bars and nighttime driving.  There was one daytime event at the senior center - but somehow a bunch of senior citizens in costumes in the lunch room just seemed somehow . . . earnest.

And now, nothing.  Just me and a couple of root vegetables.  Yet somehow, I was fine with that.  To every thing there is a season and all that.  This is what I have now, and I was oddly happy sitting out there with the little candles flickering, listening to the night sounds and the wind in the trees.  It is enough.

The Leczy puppet has been put on hold.  It was just getting too big and bulky and needs a rethink.  While my brain is resetting, I decided to turn to my loom.  I had some decadent yarn that I recently spun (merino, camel down, and silk) and rather than throw it into my ever growing stash of handspun yarns I thought I would actually make something of it.

I always liked the idea of weaving.  It seems magical - it often shows up in myths (and movies, and books).  The rhythmic throwing of the shuttle, banging the threads into place as cloth appears, weaving a spell.  The reality was often for me a lot of frustration, tangled thread, cursing (what Bob referred to as "project induced Tourettes") with the end reward of a somewhat wonky bit of cloth.  A lot of the problems came from me wanting to get on with the weaving itself - that lovely feeling of creating cloth.

What I had to realize is that part of it - the part that you think of when you think weaving - is only about 10% of it.  The analogy that I finally used to to adjust my mind set was to compare it to cooking a fine meal.  The loom setup - measuring the dozens of threads, putting them on the loom, threading them, adjusting tension - all of that could be compared to choosing ingredients, chopping, the mis en place, the actual cooking.  The final weaving the throwing of the shuttle - well, that's like the moment when you arrange the food nicely on a plate and add a sprig of parsley.

When I accepted that, and treat each step as a meditative process, it all started to go more smoothly.  And the finished scarf is beautiful (and feels even better)

I've even put another piece on - more on that later.

I had a funny panic attack at work - funny, because it's amazing how fast your brain can react.  I had gone into the big walk-in freezer to get some fish - and the door swung shut behind me.  In a flash it hit me that no one knew I had gone in there.  I didn't know if anyone would come in for the rest of the day.  I immediately thought of every story I'd ever heard of kids getting themselves into chest freezers, maybe playing hide-and-seek, and not being able to get out.  Just how long does it take to freeze to death?  Would anyone be able to hear me yelling?

All that went through my head in the approximately two seconds it took me to remember that there is an inside safety handle, and also an alarm button, and, by the way, just push the door open because it hadn't latched.  And - duh - I did have my phone on me.

But just tell your little monkey brain all that when the door closes and the light goes out.