“It’s really splendid to imagine you are a queen. You have all the fun of it without any of the inconveniences and you can stop being queen whenever you want to, which you couldn’t in real life.” –L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea

Greetings Dear Ones!

It’s blueberry season here. The ancient ruins of the “Blueberry Cathedral” are a-squirm and a-flutter with all manner of rogues and thieves, including myself, trying to rob Summer of these tart tiny tongue bombs. I tried to cover a few of the bushes with netting but it just caused more trouble than it is worth. I got all tangled up, stepped on a rake, and then couldn’t reach any of the berries I managed to get under cover. I have decided to thieve what I can in open competition with the birds and let Nature take her tithe.

“It’s only fair,” says a friend who manages her own patch, “that we share the harvest. Get out early and pick the ripe ones every twelve hours and the birds will get what you miss. It all works out in the end.”

The clusters of blueberries do not ripen all at once. It takes days, nearly weeks, of sunlight stroking the outermost berries to coax them from immature green to violet. The best plan is to be vigilant yet relaxed. Believe in Abundance but show up regularly. Remember that this, all this, is merely ours to Share.

This year, the harvest is going to be BIG. Two years of weeding, pruning, mulching and these bushes are finally back in business. Some of them needed serious life support when I moved here. The grounds were so swallowed up with multi-flora rose, Virginia Creeper, Buckthorn, Bittersweet and Wild grape that I didn’t even know there was a blueberry patch on site! I made a circlet of vines, crowned myself “Lady Bittersweet” and ripped the dusty roots until my hands were swollen. It’s a deeply satisfying Joy to see these bushes thrive again, to see thin, tanned hands reaching for berries the color of bruises healing. Someday, I will rebuild the cathedral, with its sagging buttresses and collapsed roof. For now, it keeps the sheep out, which is all that matters.

Last Sunday, another vibrant young woman with a fairytale life came to the realm to learn to spin. She had just acquired her very first spinning wheel the night before and trundled it north, to the Land of Lost Plots, to begin a lifetime of spinning on my back porch. (Well, three hours of it anyway; she did go home in the end. Presumably, what remains of her lifetime will be spent somewhere else.) I gave her a bag of roving from the very sheep who were attempting to get up on the deck and rob us of our biscuits and berries. I tried not to take it personally that she learned so much faster than I did thirty years ago. Not for her, the cursing, the gnashing of teeth or stamping of feet as the leader yarn tore and shot into the bobbin over and over again, only to be fished out through the orifice with a mangled paper clip. Nope. This lass took to spinning like sheep take to unguarded saltines.

“You aren’t learning this at all, are you?” I observed with a mixture of envy and amazement. “No, you’re remembering at a deep soul level that this is who you are. You were meant to do this. You’ve just collected another piece of yourself that you could feel you were missing.”

Her sweetheart, sitting nearby, nodded at her with adoring eyes.

“She’s very talented,” he said. She just sat there, smiling at the wool, which was aligning itself effortlessly into smooth yarn beneath her fingertips, before it slipped compliantly onto the whirring bobbin. Her foot kept time perfectly. All around her shone an aura of summer sunshine that I believed was actually emanating from within her. Her happiness lit up the entire cloudless afternoon.

I sat next to her, spinning on my own wheel, marveling at Fate. This spirit daughter/sister/soul-pod-member was technically a stranger to me. We had met in May, in Historic Deerfield, where I was doing spinning demonstrations for a springtime wool festival. She had seen advertisements on a billboard out of town and felt and immense tug in her heart to go there. “I’ve always wanted to learn about sheep and spinning,” she said. Her ever-supportive sweetheart had directed the car there immediately, abandoning the rest of their plans for the day. I could tell by the hunger in her eyes as she watched me, that she was not an innocent bystander. When she came back to hear the same presentation for a second time, I invited her on stage with me to learn right there and then.

“This… is possible???” she said, incredulously, after spinning a precious, tiny hank of hairy lumps.

“Well, I certainly wasn’t born knowing how to spin! Somehow, we learn these things. Now it’s your turn. You know the basics. Buy a wheel. Send me photos and I’ll tell you if it will work and if it’s a good deal. Then just start. Make a whole bunch of shitty yarn and go for it! Within two weeks, you’ll be champion.” The sweetheart, standing by, looked at me with a face alive with loving wisdom and understanding. He took on the mission at once.

They sent me photos and he bought her a very good wheel for her birthday. They arranged to come visit so she could get another “lesson.” We sat, wheels turning, held together in a humming bittersweet circle of a summer afternoon, fed by berries, hopes, laughs and memories, and bathed in that vast, quiet, universal and timeless Intelligence that flows forward from our ancestors, causing us each to ripen in our time.

We shared stories of our childhoods and how we each had been great “Make Believers.” Though nearly thirty years separates our ages, we both had doll houses whose occupants “came to life” at night. We saw the world in ways shaped by these dollhouse people—that a toothpaste cap could be a wonderful planter, or cheerios with nail polish on them, donuts. They roared with laughter at my frustration that blankets crocheted with dental floss did not have the correct “drape” and stuck out too stiffly on the beds. Thanks to dolls and dollhouses, we swirled in worlds of Possibilities unpolluted by marketing campaigns from Mattel or Hasbro. We made everything ourselves and the Making of it made Us.

It’s the most delicious thing I can think of—to talk of blueberries and Making and Believing on a languid Sabbath afternoon. Evening fell softer than unwaxed dental floss as the novitiate packed her wheel back into the car and headed towards the future.

Another Learner has crossed the threshold from Longing to Doing! The celebration of this feeds my spirit every time I think of it. We have these dreams, ALL of us, of spinning wheels and blueberries, of dance shoes or banjos, pickles or pottery... Thriving, Producing—these take the work of someone lovingly helping to tear away all that holds us back, even if that person needs to be ourselves. With aching hands, we rip and reach. We make a mess and try again. We rebuild and remember. Those who truly love us are the ones who help us get what we need. They help us follow the Signs and possibilities that lead us home to the selves we know we Are…

Keep Mending, Dear Ones! Sometimes, it’s too easy to get discouraged—especially when we find ourselves in fields of weeds, with nary a blueberry in sight. Things that have taken time to run amok will take the same amount of time to straighten out. Don’t quit before the miracles happen!

I love you Sew Much!

Yours aye,

Nancy