I've been thinking about time and the way it moves and twists and bends, and the way I come back to craft under crisis.
When I met Amy, 20 years ago, long before we imagined Missing Witches, I had been stitching these strange portraits and landscapes out of black embroidery thread onto vintage wool skirts and my grandfather’s old golf shirts. I wasn't sure what the project was about, but there was a thread through it of adjusting to my own wavering step by step, finding my way as a person and across the fabric, adjusting tiny stitches like tiny steps. Believing I could matter and shape my life in coherence, in a slow waltz with the forces that pulled and shifted and twisted me.
In the hospital this last time, when I was there for a week following the emergency surgery that saved my life, tethered to an IV full of “super bug antibiotics” every 6 hours, I asked my family to bring my wool, my little crochet hook. I hooked and twisted, walking around the widening granny square one loop at a time, and imagined all the millions of people who pulled wool through their fingers and let themselves breathe, becalm, slip into rhythm. In the piss neon hallways of the hospital corridors, Halloween midnight, I saw their ancient will and skill reflected in the nurses hands, all the caretakers mending the people, holding the world together for us in our most desperate moments while the greedy seek to dismantle the system our grandmothers fought for.
If the cognitive dissonance of celebrating the Holiday Season during genocide, with a technofascist Nazi coup unfolding, and the price of heat and groceries flooding up around our necks, is getting to you, well, first know you're not alone. Scream into the void but also tell the truth and find mutual aid, whatever that looks like where you are.
And second, may we humbly recommend that for all journeys through the underworld you need a tether to help you hold onto yourself. Because the truth is the times are always changing, and old racists always die. Find something to hold on to, mark the steps and breaths towards the turning of the tide.
I turn my thriftwitchery to looking for yarns: stories and strings. I figure out what I can make with the soft skeins of treasure I find. One little hook, one little will to learn new muscles in my hands. It tethers me to my neighbours, to the women's shelter we donate to. In the hospital it helped me believe again that I exist in the world and affect it. And as the soft fabric of my hours spread out across my lap I saw fisherfolk mending nets, women gasping in corsets, all us living time in its stretch and bend, calling in a softer world than the one mad power builds.
If your way is cloudy, call in your ancient kin. Feel them at the other end of your tether.
Listen and chant and cry along with Jake Blount & Mali Obomsawin's "My Way's Cloudy," from their album 'symbiont.' About the song, the artists write:
"We entered a Providence, RI studio to record My Way’s Cloudy on a clear fall day. When we walked outside again, the sky was thick with smoke from Canadian wildfires, carried down on the breeze.
Climate change’s many consequences travel like smoke, imperiling bodies and communities as surely as they shroud the sky. The music of symbiont is an attempt to join our peoples in sound and movement as we stave off death together. The spiritual “My Way’s Cloudy” was collected from formerly enslaved Black people at the Hampton Institute—mere miles from where Jake’s family originates. Our arrangement features instrumentation from our respective musical traditions and vocals from renowned Red Lake Ojibway singer Joe Rainey. The video was filmed at the Penobscot Nation featuring Selena Neptune-Bear and her two nieces Carmella and Layla Bear."
Prescription
Hold one thread. Choose one implement. A needle? A crochet hook? The sharp stakes of the knitter? Imagine the ten thousand ancestors who held it before you, see them holding the other end of your yarn, pulling you towards them.
Choose one tiny motion and repeat it.
Slowly your hands will learn the rhythm, what starts awkward and impossible becomes known stitch by stitch.
Stitch and bitch with your crotchety neighbour. Make a rope of your rage and then unspool it and knit it into a scarf to protect your voice. Release the hooks in you screaming to consume and create instead. Tie ten knots chanting your will for justice into the world.
Tie one loop of yarn around your wrist to remember there is magic, and that you are promised to a wilder, kinder tomorrow.
Let the making remind you that you exist, and your will affects the world.
Stitch by stitch.
Invitations
First Sundays Tarot Reading Practice
Sun, Dec 7 — 1:00–2:00 PM ET
Come to practice reading tarot with your covenmates. All learners are welcome. No experience necessary.
Cozy Coven Tea: Welcome New Members + Celebrate Solar Returns
Wed, Dec 10 — 12:00–1:00 PM ET
A new monthly tradition! Let's welcome new members, celebrate anyone who's had a birthday this month, drink cozy things out of cute mugs, hang out, craft, chat witchcraft, whatever that means for you today.
Plantkin: Yule Edition
Sat, Dec 13 — 6:00–8:00 PM ET
Yule! The new year (for witches) – so let's create some plantkin goodies for our homes, while sharing our new year plans as the sun comes back slowly into our lives and inspires us to prepare for Spring! We’ll be making Orange Pomander Balls and seasonal garlands. This will be a cozy, hands-on way to celebrate the season.
Official Event: COVEN YULETIDE PARTY!!
Wed, Dec 17 — 8:00–9:30 PM ET
IMAGINE: it's the last new moon of the year, it's cold and dark outside, snow blankets and quiets the world. But we are together, celebrating the shadow time. Suddenly, the power goes out. The lights go off. The music stops. We gather around the hearth, wrapped in blankets, cider still warm in our mugs. What story will you tell in this moment? What song will you sing?
Bring something that feels like Winter, Solstice, Yuletide. Reading, poem, song, recipe, story, myth, joke, blessing, divination, astrology — anything that fits the vibe.
Join the Coven
If you're reading this from outside the circle, come on in. We’d love to welcome you.
Meanwhile,
Go gently.
Stitch by stitch.
oxoBFB Risa + Amy T.
