Round, Round, Round

I didn't have to work Saturday! Yay! AND I made it Hobby Lobby! Go me. It was packed. Obviously, everybody has projects.

I still have to work 9 hour shifts this week. I think the plant is punishing us for getting Memorial Day off. I woke up early today and I tried to go back to sleep, but my body wasn't having it. My body wants to move. I'll pay for this extra activity tonight towards the end of my shift. I'm pretty sure I won't wake early tomorrow.

Because I know this week will be brutal, I think it is more important than ever to have several sewing projects with me. Now I currently have more projects than I can complete in one lifetime, but that is not the point. The point is I had an idea; then the idea became obsession.

But just the project itself wasn't enough. I started wondering why there isn't a magickal sewing tradition. I know lots of people incorporate spells into sewing, or use sewing for magick. When I say there is no tradition, I mean there is no system or practice of magick based entirely on stitchery. For example, the whole point of being a Druid is to work with Celtic Gods with nature as a backdrop. They have rules, beliefs, holidays, rites, and words. In order for there to be a sewing tradition, we would need chants for stitching, a Goddess of needlework, rules about what fibers to use, when we could sew, rules about how to start, and holidays dedicated to quilts or sewing machines.

While we have Goddesses associated with fibers and textiles, like Isis who civilized the world by teaching weaving, we stitchers don't have a set pantheon of gods. We have no special day devoted to sewing. You can't tell a stitch witch by the way we thread needles because we don't have any set ways or rules for how we do our work.

Sewing lends itself very well to spells. Sewing involves color, math, and repetition. It works for spells large and small. But it is a huge amount of work. Even a small bag can take half the day to make. And there's lots of places where things can go wrong. Imagine merrily sewing along and suddenly the sewing machine jams up. That would put a kink in magickal flow. Run out of thread? Forced to use a different color? Will that affect the spell? I just don't think there will ever be a stitch witch tradition. I'd love to see it, but I don't think it would be very practical.

But that doesn't stop me from using sewing to create magick.

A round design needs a round medium. I started counting holes and came up with 207. I settled on 9 as a base number and three shades of purple. See? 3x3. Goddess numbers. When I was counting, I used pins on every 10th hole so I wouldn't miscount. After I got 207, I used safety pins to mark the 9th holes. I started running out of safety pins. I decided to make 9 stitches of my three colors, intending to move the safety pins over as I worked. It was at this point that I recounted and got a very different number so I am still not sure how many holes are on the outer edge of my circle or even if my 3 colors in groups of nine stitches will even work. You see why there is no tradition?

Close up. I was counting and pinning during a thunderstorm. Storms are great for magick.

I found a rusty safety pin. Rust is bad for several reasons, not only will it damage cloth, magick is impeded by dirty, bent things. I cleaned out my pin cushion. I threw away this rusty safety pin, and two bent straight pins. I wiped away the dust and put everything back as neatly as possible. Organizing sewing supplies is a boring but utterly necessary thing to do.

I still have some work to do before I can start stitching. Because this work is for a spell, my supplies need to be cleansed and charged.