Project 10: Tarot Card Bag

True confessions time. I haven't used my Tarot cards in a few years. I guess I've come to rely on my own intuition more than I did when I was younger. Anyway, I had occasion to use them last week and found that the black velvet bag I made for them thirty years ago was in a deplorable state.

I used left-over linen from my shirt projects. Black for the outside, red for the lining and added some of my Celtic knot work trim. I've never made a lined bad before, but it came together fairly easily. I just thought through how each piece should relate to the others. Now my Aquarian Tarot card deck purchased from Shotwell's Bookstore in Poulsbo in 1979 has a new home.

Eight Years and Counting

Eight years ago today, Doug and I had our first date. We met a week earlier at a Vancouver Gaelic Society céilidh when I had come up to meet a visiting Gaelic singer, the fabulous Cathy Ann MacPhee. A mutual friend, Bruce Power of the Vancouver Gaelic choir, introduced us. I think that Doug and I hit it off because I knew I didn't stand a chance with this adorable blonde guy so I just kind of acted like my normal, sarcastic self. Turns out that was the right answer all along.

When he said he would like to come down for a visit the following weekend, I thought he just wanted to see some of his Seattle friends, or come to a house céilidh, or do some shopping. About eight hours into it, though, I came to the conclusion that I was on an actual date! I was quite surprised.

Since then we've each moved house, changed jobs, and helped each other through tough times. I've put 115,000 miles on my car driving back and forth to Vancouver and he's spent countless hours on Quick Shuttle buses. With all that we've been through, the good and the bad, I'd do it all over again if I had the chance.

Happy Date-a-versary, Sweetie.

Project 9: Red Shirt

Not in the Star Trek sense, of course. This time through my trusty McCalls 4399 I didn't need to look at the directions. Bright colors for Spring!

Glimpsing the Other Life

I remember vividly the moment when I accepted the fact that I would likely not make my living with music. My family had a major financial reversal during the summer after my first year attending Cornish College of the Arts and so when my Mom and I went to register for the second year, we realized that I would be borrowing as much money for the second year as the first but only be attending half time. We sat on together on the front steps of the school and I said to her "How can I keep borrowing this money if I don't know that I'll ever make a living at music?" She replied "Can you not do this and still be who you are?"

No. Decision made.

I graduated from Cornish and got a full-time job where I had been temping during summer breaks in the student loan industry. That was a stable career for over a decade. When it came to an end I briefly considered trying to make the leap into music, but quickly realized that my need for income made that a bad idea. So instead I went into government contracting where I still am today. It's provided me with the opportunity to retire all my credit card debts, buy a condo and start saving for retirement.

This weekend, though, I'm getting the chance to have a taste of what life might have been like if I had made different choices. My Vancouver harp buddy Alys and I are the opening act for a fundraising concert in Everett on Saturday night and on Sunday we zip up to Vancouver to play at CelticFest. We've been rehearsing and practicing a lot and I made all the travel arrangements so it feels a bit like a concert tour. At the end of all this work and excitement (read: stress) I'll take a look at how much money is left after expenses and I imagine that I'll still be happy with the choices I made back in the 80s.

Project 8: Black & Brown Shirts

These are now my favorite shirts ever. They're made from thick, thick linen which I would have never splurged on for myself. Lingoman's mother, however, provided the means as a Solstice gift (gods bless her) so I had to do it! Did that sound convincing?

I intended to try an experiment in mass production by doing all the cutting for both shirts, then all the sewing but I just couldn't. By the time I finished cutting out the pieces for one shirt I was done with that activity. So, I made them sequentially.

The silver-colored Celtic knotwork buttons on the black shirt actually came from my local fabric store, not from a specialty source. Pacific Fabrics rocks.



Lessons learned this time out:

• Linen is loosely woven and moves but you don't have to panic. If it moves while you're cutting and it's a little off shape it will move just as well while you're pinning and you can fix small errors
• Sew buttons on by hand. You don't save much time by using the machine and they're never quite as solid.
• Spend a few extra bucks for the nicer fabric. If you're going to spend all those hours cutting and sewing it's worth it.
• My six-year-old 1 megapixel digital camera sucks.

Là Feille Brìde: Bridget's Feast Day

Today is the second of February, which in the old calendar was the day that fell halfway between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. Among Gaelic-speaking peoples prior to their adoption of Christianity, this day was holy to the Goddess Brìd. As Gaeldom began to accept the new religion it did so at first on its own terms. The new relationship between the people and a new set of Gods had to be cemented in the proper way; with fosterage. Brìd shifted from being the triple Goddess of smith craft, poetry and healing to being the foster mother of Jesus. This was a very prestigious role in Gaelic society, which denoted the importance of Brìd to her own people.

Although I honor all the Gods, there is a special place in my heart and on my altar for Brìd. Having a special role in the transformative and restorative arts, I call on her when I need change in myself or the world around me. From tonight through the day that is the actual halfway point through Winter in the modern calendar I will make special offerings to Her in hopes that this world gets the changes it needs, and also that it wants most of them.

This is the kind of thing I meant

One of my earliest posts was a set of recommendations for helping straight people get past the Eww! Ick! response when they see same-sex couples express affection. In it I recommended going out of their way to see same-sex themed movies or TV shows and I emphasized the fact that I didn't mean pornography.

I was recently hipped by Joe. My. God. to a new music video by openly gay singer-songwriter Matt Alber. It's a great song and a very beautiful video. As a gay person in North America, I've spent my whole life switching pronouns in my head and reframing stories in movies and TV shows so that I could relate to the characters. Give it a try! It will help you appreciate the ease of being in the majority.

Dad's Fiddle Reborn

The story of me becoming a fiddler starts when I was a very young kid. There were large cupboards above my parent's clothes closet where seldom-used things were kept, and those storage spaces were the most magical destination in my young world. When I could get away with it I would find a way to get up into those cupboards and peek into the boxes that held Christmas decorations, old keepsakes and my Dad's violin. Dad studied with the first chair of the Minneapolis Symphony until the Great Depression hit in 1929 when he was 10 years old. Music fell by the wayside as he looked for ways to make money to help support his family.

The violin sat in its case for 64 years until his death in 1993, when Mom gave it to me. Becoming a fiddler had never been in my plan for life, but when I held that poor, decrepit instrument in my hands it felt like a door opened in my heart and the fiddle moved in beside the harp. I had the initial restoration done by a violin company south of Seattle, and not knowing any better, thought they had done a good job. I marveled at how incredibly difficult it was to get a good sound out of a violin and being who I am, I blamed my lack of talent.

After 14 years of dabbling at playing it I finally got to a place in my career and life where I could afford to spend a couple grand on a better violin. As it turns out, the poor set-up and repair work was at least partly to blame for my lack of progress. My new violin was a revelation. It was so much easier to play that I practiced for hours every day and my skills took a quantum leap forward.

Which brings me back to my Dad's violin. After getting my new one, I moved Dad's up to Lingoman's apartment for weekend use, but I never played it; I had been spoiled. A couple of weeks ago the radical weather fluctuations caused all the tuning pegs to let go and the bridge fell down. Non-players might not know, but the precise placement of the bridge, which is held in place by string tension, is a critical element in how an instrument sounds.

So I decided to bring Dad's violin into Lasley and Russ in Ballard to see what could be done. To my surprise, Duane Lasley thought that he could overhaul it and make it into a decent instrument. He took the top off, carved down some of the surfaces, sanded the fingerboard smooth, replaced the tail piece and tuning pegs and now it's almost as nice as my new violin. Duane tells me that it will continue to adjust and improve over time.

Well, Dad, the instrument you had to abandon at the beginning of the Great Depression has been reborn in your son's hands at the beginning of the Second Great Depression. I think I'm going to have to write a tune about that.