Raw Potential

Making From The Ground Up

“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.” - Roald Dahl

Here’s what’s been on repeat around here:

I get asked a lot of questions - when you’re online as often as I am screaming this loudly about the things that bring you so much joy, you can’t contain it and it feels like it’s going to crack you open and spill right out of your body, you tend to attract attention - and the one that seems to come up fairly often is “Why raw?”

And you know, I get it. It’s a lot of labor to get to a product that then still requires more labor to get to something useful and then even more labor to get to the ever aspirational “finished object” (I have FEELINGS about this term and one of these days, I just might share them) and to the uninitiated, I can absolutely understand the head scratching.

There’s the smell, the checking for breaks and moths and dags, the disappointment when what you’ve opened is not what you hoped or paid for, the myriad of hot water burns because you seem to forget gloves are non negotiable every single time, the back breaking work of hauling buckets of heavy wool and dirty water around, the crossing your fingers and hoping you’ve scoured it enough that it’s not still full of lanolin and hoping you haven’t completely ruined and felted the precious cargo, the endless dry times, the work, the work, the work.

But then, there’s the smell, the delight in a ping test that’s perfectly crisp and bell ringing, the euphoria of realizing you’ve won the lottery with this fleece (and yes you thought you won the lottery last time but there are multiple lotteries and infinite potential to win and keep on winning), the bond you build with the shepherd of this animal who lovingly took care of them and fed them and housed them and then packed their wool into a perfectly square box and sealed it with all of their hopes and dreams that you would love it just as much as they do, the back breaking work of hauling water around and watching that runoff, that goodbye become that much cleaner, that much lighter, the work, the work, the work.

There is magic in the boxes raw wool makes its way over in, magic in the way the shepherds pack pound and pounds of fluff into oversized plastic bags and vacuum the air right out until it folds in on itself, curved inwards and protective like a bud waiting for the right combination of light and water and space (and love, always love) to bloom, magic in the way they shove the fresh shearings into priority containers way too small for its sheer bulk held together with rounds and rounds of packing tape, magic in the way it sails through the mail system to me, magic in the way it expands and breathes and carves out space for itself  when freed from its cardboard prison, magic in the way it remembers where it was before - britch, neck, belly, magic in the way it helps us remember.

Raw wool is a veritable smorgasbord of options - scoured or in the grease, lock by lock or in giant buckets, Kookabura or Unicorn, combed or carded, woolen or worsted or something in between, fingering, sport, dk, sweaters, shawl, socks - and at the core of it all, it is the best example of possibility - a blank canvas that can become any and everything I will it to be and am willing to put the work in to ensure it comes to fruition. For a recovering control freak and perfectionist, it is a hedonistic array of choices to make where I can either hold on tighter than tight with both fists and force this giving substance to become exactly what I want or I can listen and dance in communion with it, flexing and stretching and altering myself alongside in a ritual as old as time.

Prepping wool has gotten me though many a dark night when my mind wouldn’t go quiet and there was not enough space in my heart for tasks that required more than the rhythmic motions of wool combs against each other or the brush and flick of carding tines or the push and pull of a diz against aligned strips of fiber as I sat and reminded myself to breathe through it, that the world was not ending, that the monsters under my bed were of my own making, that the windmills were just that.  This act, this work, this commitment to honoring who I am by honoring all of those who came before me is a meditation, a way of putting hope and a prayer into a garment that would eventually warm someone I love (I am someone I love, I am), a tangible connection between someone who planted the seed and watered the grass and raised the animals that did the magic of turning green things into fleece and my empty hands desperate for something real and grounding to hold on to.

Raw wool, primitive crafting, making from the ground up is a way to dig deep, a way to head back to time pre modernity, pre capitalism, pre the rabbit race that is relentless in its quest to crush the joy, the wonder, the awe right out of us until we have conformed into cogs in the machine, a touchstone to people that came before us and the people ahead. It is the way I choose to commune with them, with myself, a vehicle for a conversation I’ve been itching to have but didn’t realize I needed, a place to press pause and sink in deep, feet planted and heavy and secure for the time we have together before real life intrudes on this sacred bubble.

So why raw? I choose raw because it is wild and free and full of life. I choose raw because it is ancient and profound while remaining accessible enough for us to grab and hold close and stick under our beds and whisper sweet nothings in the night to. I choose raw because it’s fun and the people who love it are fun and I could always have more fun in my life.  I choose raw because the twists of the fibers remind me of the helices of DNA and sometimes it feels like I am holding the blueprint of the universe in each hand and that kind of starlight magic is both unsustainable and impossible to resist. As the piles and baskets grow (the one on top of the closet is getting pretty precarious), I continue to choose raw because with each scoured lock I find myself falling a bit more into the self I want to be - a person committed to digging deeper, processing more magic, and spinning more joy.

In this season of starlight, this season of small and daily miracles, isn’t it a wonder that we get to find bits and pieces of ourself in the magic of growing things and that the parts of us that make us whole always seem to find us right when they’re needed most? I like to think that even if I wasn’t terminally online in the fall of 2021, spiraling out of control and just looking for something to help me hold it all together, raw wool would have found me somehow and would have carved out that space for itself it was always meant to have and the people that came into my life as a direct result of choosing raw would have chosen me anyway.

So maybe that’s why I choose raw - because the choice was always one I was meant to make and one I was meant to continue making and when our work is done (hopefully never but sometimes saying goodbye is saying I love you just as much as saying hello is), it is leaving me a better person than it found.

• Cole Arthur Reilly is speaking to my heart right now.

• I come back to this article by Barbara Kingsolver weekly and I love it more each time.

• Rilke on Darkness for all of the moonlight lovers.

• Irish tavern music for the best background crafting sounds.

• I love Tiny Desk Concerts and Alicia Keys is one of my favorites.

Yours in Starlight and Joy,

Tazhi

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Tangles and Starlight is a weekly-ish newsletter where I leave my heart on the page in the hopes that you will pick it up and meet me with your own. Please feel free to share the bits of it that resonate and use that magic to fuel your own awe filled explorations. It is a joy to be human alongside with you - thank you for reading and for being here. If you enjoyed this, please consider subscribing and sticking around.