"A New Dawning"

Getting Hit by a Car, a New Mix, and Workshop Notes

It’s been a rough week. I got hit by an elderly person who rolled their car through a stop sign into a bike lane and hit me this past week. Somehow (thanks mom!) I rolled right out of getting t-boned on my bike without getting seriously injured. However, the wheel on my new bike is absolutely toaster-oni.

As you can see, I will not be able to spin around anywhere on that wheel. Getting hit is a pretty crushing blow for me. Not only does it shatter my sense of safety while riding, it also slows down my pursuit of my biking goals while I wait for a new wheel to be built to replace it.

To make matters worst in high eclipse and mercury retrograde shenanigans, I found a crack in the chainstay of the steel frame of my beloved atlantis gravel/touring bike. This may be fixable. We will be sending the frame out to a framebuilder in the next couple weeks, so that a whole new rear triangle can hopefully be welded into place to replace the compromised section. This blow is even more crushing, because I had ridden thousands of miles on the Atlantis. I have such a relationship with this bike that it feels really scary to possibly lose it. I honestly do not know what to do if it cannot be fixed. There will be some pretty heavy death work associated with that if that is indeed what comes to pass. For now, I am trying to just ride the roller coaster of this mishap and see what comes. There is no use in mourning yet. A new dawn for the atlantis might still be possible. I purposely bought a lugged steel bike when I sold my car so that I could replace cracked tubes if that came to pass. All y’all keep your fingers crossed for me

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Mix of the Week - “A New Dawning: Roots and Dub Selections”

I have literally only been listening to dub and roots music in the last week and half to make this mix. I was going to put it out last week, but I ended up not wanting to rush it. That was a great idea, because making this mix was a true joy. I poured over all my roots and dub LPs, listened to some new records, and only took songs that literally shot through my body and soul with a jolt. Now, that jolt manifested sometimes as a head bobble and others as full-throated singing. Regardless of the outward expression this is roots and dub that will bring your soul alive with passion for life. It’s the mix you put on as the spring blooms begin and again as the summer reaches its apex. It’s also a mix for a late summer afternoon when the first bit of fall begins to show itself. It’s a mix for all those new dawnings we experience throughout the wheel of the year. Turn it on and enjoy today. Special thanks to record selector, par excellence, Matthew Hamilton for the Pachyman suggestion.

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Workshop Notes - It’s an everyday process now.

I am in the teeth of this small memorial death cloth to memorialize Luigi Humrich, a sweet doggo who passed on. I have completed spinning the yarn, warping, color blending, and blocking the yarn. I have warped the loom and started weaving. It’s all in a day’s work for a hobbyist fiber spell weaver.

Shoot, it’s so weird to say that too, considering that it has been about 7 years since I started weaving and even less since I was a hand spinner and hand dyeing. It’s always so jarring to realize I have this capability in my hands. I know that I never imagined being able to do what I do now. I can spinning yarn from a fleece, dye it, and weave it up full of symbols that ply spells of inspiration, protection, and healing into the resulting textile. Now that I say that, I realize I have reached some tall summit for myself in being able to wield a trade. As the son of an extended family of tool and die and autoworkers, this is something I have aimed for for much of my life. It’s the same yearning that finds me want to take up brick laying or carpentry. There is something in me that always wanted to have skills in my hands and useful embodied knowledge.

Now, my everyday life is an expression of that magic when I remain disciplined and keep my craft time as my daily date with my loom, spindle, or dye pot. I am rather serious about that discipline, given that summit I have crested in my life as a learner has required years of daily devotion to a rather simple set of tasks. Not surprisingly, as I have continued to practice, the layers of complexity that one can peel back from that simple set of fiber art tasks reveals the pathway toward my own personal growth as a druid, artist, and human. For me, this is the expression of a fulfilling life. Some folx want the pagentry. Who am I to deny them that? I just have a different path to walk. I don’t want any pomp and circumstance around my magic. I want my pathway to shift with the seasons. I want it as threadbare as a grain sack and simple as sweeping a wooden floor. I want it to be as mundane as the coffee mug I turn to each morning. I want that magic to ooze our of the simple spells I utter in the crevices of my day. I want to be a druid hiding in plain sight.

In many ways, I have died countless times over to be this druid hiding in plain sight. There was the death of a person who sought feelings of self worth by succeeding in competitions. There was the death of the person who sought affirmation by climbing the rungs of professional competency. There even was the death of a person who wanted to be known and renowned. All those versions of me had to die for me to be this hermitic, fiber art practitioner who plys their magic on the shifts of the seasons and shares their ideas on a pirate radio station on the edge of the web. There are so many instances wherein I could utter, “I used to…,” that it’s sort of mind boggling at this point. I am sure its the same for you. Again and again, I think we have all learned that some versions of ourselves have had to die to make way for who we wanted to become. It’s no different for our spider kin who reweave their webs when their existing web is no longer able to support them any longer. We must let go of ways of being that no longer serve us to move toward who and what we want to become. I suppose that’s why I am so threadbare at this point. I have distilled myself down to a set of essential essences and forces that animate my waking hours and left everything else to the side.

That’s what I place so much emphasis on everyday life as a fiber artist, druid, and death worker. It’s the very barebones work of daily work that keeps all this work alive for me. With a fulltime job, body movement, parenting, and being a partner, none of any of this gets done without just carving out an hour here or there. It all adds up in the end, but my progress on projects is slow and steady. I have learned that the real work of becoming and transforming happens in that accumulated time at a skill that can only happen with a steady devotion to that craft. Again, some come in hot-n-heavy devoting significant blocks of time to fiber art for a year only to ghost the practice in the end for some other pursuit. I know that honeymoon phase well. However, I am more impressed with those people who continue at the craft well beyond that phase and continue to show up each day regardless of who is paying attention. That consistency is what I try to pride myself on. That’s what a magical life is built on.

One of the practices I have been working on over the last year is my color blending. In the picture of the weaving above, you can see the beginnings of the ombre effect I am trying to blend into this memorial altar cloth. As you can see, I chose my colors to match Luigi’s fur colors and will use white in the middle so that his fur can really pop color wise and weft placement wise. This photo shows the beginning of that blending by incorporating little pops of that lighter brown into the darker chocolate handspun backdrop. I will do that for 4 our so rows and then transition to predominately lighter brown with pops of chocolate. The next 8 rows of that inch of weaving will mirror this sort of method but with white yarn as the lighter shade. This will set up our middle section where we can finally work with Luigi’s fur. Before I know it, I will be meeting up with Destiny to show her the finished piece.

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Thanks for being here, dear reader. As always, I save the best stuff for y’all because of your undying support of this project. I feel so luck to have 30 or so people who believe in me enough to put their hard earned money down to support this project. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

Until Next Time,

James