Sex

A while ago I was asked by a friend to write a piece for a book that she was going to create, with letters from all sorts of people, written to a young woman on the cusp of her dawning womanhood and sexuality.  

And this is what I wrote........

As you step up to your sexual life, surrounded by all the messages that have been gifted to you whether you wanted them or not, about men and women and sex, all those fairytales of princes and princesses, and the wishing and hoping that you’ve felt all your life from people around you……

There’s just one thing that I really want you to know.

Your sexuality can change.  Drastically.  And it’s up to you and how deep you’re willing to dive into yourself and your authentic reality, and get to know and love yourself, as to how deep you’ll dive into a sexual relationship.   So many people think that their sexuality is just something they’re born with, and that they have to make the best of what they’ve got, but in my experience, that just isn’t the case.

I bristled into the world of sexuality at 16, with my travelling bags packed with all sorts of other peoples baggage.  The main baggage stowed away in my bags was from my mother.  A fundamentalist Christian, she informed me often that men were rabid beasts, that would rape me at the drop of a hat, ( I must admit that thought kind of excited me with the thrill of danger) and that it was up to me to stay decorus in all occasions, and make sure I didn’t egg them on.  She also told me that using a tampon was like having sex, so not to use them till after I was married.  I was so disappointed when I used my first tampon off in the bush, borrowed from a friends mum, and embarrassedly tried to ‘get it in’. 

In order to get over that, I had to fuck a lot of people.  I also started off the sexual game with absolutely no self esteem or sense of boundaries, so my experiences were a mix of pretty foul and surprisingly sexy to start off with.  Peppered with the odd spray of a delightful and respectful experience with a random man or woman.  I would valiantly attempt to have sex with just about anyone that suggested it.  After an emotionally cold and physically frigid childhood, any attention at all was cause for gratitude in me.  But despite my utmost attempts…….my cunt was clamped shut.  I’ve only ever heard about this condition occurring in old women, and called something to do with walnuts, but I know it’s possible, cause it happened to me.  I had many a man dedicatedly try to enter my centre of sex, and be totally unsuccessful.  They weren’t just half hearted attempts either.  One gentle man even bathed me and massaged me all over, but I was barred to all access.  I travelled round Europe for a year, going home with all sorts of men, some even just rolling round on the grass in the dark in a park, and never managed to have proper sex.  They all came around the general region, but they never penetrated my warm castle. 

Because I was so easy, I was treated as one that you liked to sleep with but not bring home to mother.  It took poetry and cards and flowers from a gentle man with a small penis, to finally enter my barricades.  And then no holds were barred, as I launched out into sexploration. 

I did just about everything.  Men, Women, Threesomes, Orgies, Affairs, One Night Stands, Oral, Anal, Holy Whoring………and I never really felt a thing.  My cunt may have been opened but my heart wasn’t.  Everything was experienced through my head.  It was like my body was numb, and I lived it through my thoughts.  I learnt how to fake orgasms and make like a porn star.  And even more, I learnt how to become an extremely fine lover, so as my lovers were so gone on bliss, that they wouldn’t notice my absence.  Some moments really hit through the gaffa tape wrapped round my body, like the first time I was fisted, and some moments of pure love.  I treasured them close.  But some moments were totally awful, and I experienced rape (by women no less), to heap on top of having body memories of childhood abuse.

Alongside sex, I was unpeeling the wraps of my childhood and cultural clutches, and trying to work out who the hell I really was beyond what I’d been moulded to.  I spent many years undoing things.  My patterns and conditioning.  My need to keep busy.  I tensed myself into relaxing.  I made myself sit and do nothing.  I tried to listen to my instinct buried deep beneath entrenched dogma.  I learnt from everything and everyone around me.  I found treasures in the dark.

And I started to really learn about myself.  About my own way of doing things.  About my heart.  More to the point, I started to really like who I was.  Like how my survival instincts had led me, even when I found it hard to hear them.  Like the stories that made me who I was.

Then I bumped into my soul mate.  Sitting on a barstool, with his blue blue eyes that I fell into, and couldn’t get out of.  We had a long one night fling, and I thought it was all she wrote, but on getting home he haunted me.  Quite a worldy wise sexual professional at that point, he’d been the first to treat me with such utmost respect, chivalry, and acceptance.  I wrote a book inspired by the experience, and then on meeting up again, all the things I’d written had come to pass.  We have an amazing meeting story, but what’s even more important to my point right now, is that our hearts met as well as our sex, and after all of those journeys that I’ve told you about, I went from being a sexually rapacious ice queen, to feeling sex and love and bliss and warmth through my whole soul and  body. 

We fuck like a god and goddess taking a break from their day jobs and moonlighting as porn stars. 

But it wasn’t an easy journey.  It wasn’t all hearts and roses and knights on stallions, and once we met it wasn’t happy ever after.  We both had shitty childhoods we were recovering from, massive trust issues, and dark paths that we’d travelled to get to each other.  We put each other through the wringer, and tested each other over and over, and all the time I thought I’d ‘lowered’ myself to his vibration and was healing him, I was actually letting him heal me equally.  He took 5 years to believe that I really loved him and was going to stay.  I reckon I took about the same. 

We’re noisy and we argue, and we make love and war equally passionately, and most important to both of us……….we have absolutely no secrets from each other.  We tell each other the absolute truth.  After childhoods full of hypocrisy, duplicity, and lies, we’re totally allergic to all of it.  We got into so much trouble before we found each other with the world out there, cause we refused to lie.  To ourselves or anyone else.  No matter how uncomfortable that may have made life around us. 

Right in the beginning, in our torrid and explosive implosion into each other, a woman from my childhood religion came to visit, who’d known me since I was a baby.  And she spent the day with us hearing stories and mutually falling in love.  And right near the end she said, “When you come across those seemingly unsurpassable brick walls in your relationship, the ones that other people say you should just give up on……don’t.  Find some way to get under it, or over it, or around it, or knock it down, cause I guarantee you, that when you get over the other side, the love and trust and gifts that it will bring will be worth it.”

And she was right.

Even though we’ve waited till it was extremely unpopular till we did it, me and my man have been together for over 14 years now, and apart from a few little tests at the beginning, have been completely, lustfully, and explicitly monogamous.  The crystalline and multifaceted glittering creation that we’ve crafted between us and around us, is built from all our tests and trials in the beginning, and our coming togethers, and our fights, and our sexuality, and our births, and the amazing sexual fests that created our babies, and our bodies and the way they smell and look and age, and our complete and total honesty with ourselves and each other, and our growing mutual and self love………and our sex life all these years and babies down the track is simply epic. 

After starting my sexual journey as a maiden novice, clamped and numbed shut, I’ve matured through the mother and sexual phase into a goddess alongside my god.  I thought our sexual climate was pretty rare and fine before we got to this volcanic region of the Northern Rivers, but since coming here, we birthed our seventh baby together that was as my midwife described, ‘The epitome of the sexual birthing divine feminine’, and birthed an ectopic pregnancy together a year and a half later that was equally powerful, and find ourselves in a golden age that just keeps getting better.  I have multiple orgasms and women’s ejaculations and we regularly say to each other ‘wow…..never did that before!’.  Despite realistic expectations, our sex life keeps getting better. 

Your sexual journey as a woman, is a journey, not a destination.  And you can always change it.  Take it from me.  I know.

About Bonding......again....

I’ve lived in a house on the edge of an escarpment in the Blue Mountains, where the wind would rush up from the valley, and push the door closed, and whip through your skin to tickle your bones.  Where mist would sit like a waveless ocean in the deep blue valleys, and the cliffs would shine in the sun.

In an old terrace house, with a huge and elegant bedroom, that had a quaint fireplace and balcony, overlooking a busy country street in Bathurst.

In a caravan, on the bend of a river through an Arab horse stud, where I spent all my days looking after horses and riding.

In a student house in Strassbourg with Canadian art students, creating exhibitions in deserted warehouses.

Above a pub in Islington.

In the bottom storey of a massive sandstone manor called Wadi Shaifa, looking over another valley in the Blue Mountains, with massive windows where the moon shone in, and an enchanting park down through the front yard.

In a share house in Lane Cove, with bright lights and a beautifully glittering harbour.

In a witches cottage in Katoomba, set behind the street, where magic seemed to shimmer on the walls, and I painted it cream and crimson as soon as I moved in.

In a two storey cottage on Cliff Drive near the Three Sisters, with an overgrown garden that my girlfriend and I reverently uncovered like archaeologists, in a cute and artfully painted home.

In a stunning three storey tower with floor to ceiling windows, and carved bookshelves, looking out on another valley in the mountains.

In a bluestone mansion, set into a disused sandstone quarry in Stirling, with a spa bath, and paved verandahs, and luxury living.

In a three story rammed earth squat, with wooden balconies, in a country town in Adelaide.

In a disused Uniting Church Camp, where we hung out in a massive Mess Hall with a huge stone fireplace, and I had one of the oldest churches in Adelaide, as my first ever studio.

In a quirky, greek style, 4 brick thick home in the Adelaide Hills, on beautiful land, with massive gum trees, and a sacred spot where three creeks met.  We lived in a meditation studio, and witnessed epic night skies, and one night we even saw a Moonbow.

On a community in the Adelaide Hills in a true hippy home, where all the houses were joined by the roof to stay on one title.  Living on redgum regeneration land on the Meadows creek, and right next door to pristine indigenous bush, and stately pine forests.

In a bizarre little self organized shared household in Mt Barker Springs, where we lived in an unlined shed that I hung with material. With an indoor/outdoor fire pit, that we sat around a lot. 

In a little shack on the side of Mount Donna Buang in Victoria, in breathtaking mountain ash forests.

We’ve slept in a river bed outside Alice Springs, where you can see the Emu in the sky most perfectly.  Red earth and wide skies, and the brilliant aliveness of the desert.

And in and around all of these homes, our deep and abiding hearts home, was our ex army Toyota Commuter van, that I crocheted the seat covers of, and made cargo nets and beds in, and crafted hand made swags for.  In which we drove everywhere, could be ourselves and unobserved more than anywhere else, and had a mobile environment that we took with us everywhere we went, as a permanent sanctuary.  Where we could wake up at any place in the country, and have a cuddle before a strong cup of coffee. 

We’ve lived in two beautiful houses, on the picturesque and diverse community of Billen Cliffs, in Northern NSW. 

And I’ve never loved a home and parcel of land as much as I love it here.

Living here has fit a final piece to a puzzle that I’ve been working on, researching, and personally experimenting with for decades.  That puzzle being the full capacity and breadth and wealth of bonding in it’s extreme.  And through beginning to know the ocean of it…….maybe more to the point learning in the extreme what bonding ISN’T, along the way. 

And to be brutally honest, from my perspective as a bonded lover, mother, crafter, and now home dweller and animal herd……..virtually every facet of western civilization, is more of a lesson on how to unbond, disunite, disconnect, and separate, than any kind of bonding and love leading to community, self organization and empowerment. 

I’ve written so much about bonding over the years, from many perspectives, it’s been an almost obsession in my life and blog.  All the lessons  I’ve learnt from unparalleled honesty and trust, in an intimate and loving releationship, and from my larger amount of birthing experiences than the average bear, have led to very similar whole body learnings about love and bonding.  Those lessons now extend into home, land, and animals – all universes on their own.

Before I started my interior journey through loving Currawong and birthing babies, I thought of bonding as some vague cliché thrown around in ways like ‘male bonding’ and ‘female bonding,’ to do with sports or business.  The most I really heard about it was in nature documentaries and zoo stories around bonding, and farming stories of bonding to other species.  If this kind of inter species bonding and it's potential power interests you, watch this documentary about Animal Odd Couples.

But through living all my different experiences, I’ve learnt how integral bonding really is, in our mammalian journeys, and through our ancestral and evolved consciousnesses.  I believe, through truly living my life and following my own path, I’ve stumbled onto enlightenment through all the stuff that most people like to transcend.  I’ve deeply bonded with my mate, with my children, with my home, with the land around me, and with the animals we share the land with, both domesticated and wild.  I’ve bonded with the world around me, through my focus and unbinding into the bonding of birth, sex and death.

And this is the kind of bonding, love, community and connection that my ancestors went to war for.  Defended their lands with their lives for.  And had many stories and different ways to access the divinity within them, and through them, their land and connections. 

Living as we are presently, in Western Culture, or maybe more accurately, as the most educated Roman Slaves on the planet………..it’s not surprising that virtually all aspects of our society, are about how to disconnect us from each other, to prevent that bonding and community from forming.  From my perspective anyway.

Why is homebirth and homeschooling so roundly and solidly attacked?  Have you ever wondered about that?  Such a tiny minority of people?  Who affect hardly anyone?  With virtually no damage to the average person? Why is homeschooling illegal in virtually every western nation except America and Australia?  And why is homebirthing so intensely vilified?  Could it be, that these very events can potentially create greater bonding, and thereby increase the capacity for community?  Why are the genders set up in war against each other?  Why have sensible wholes been split into dualities that are foolish without each other?  God and Science belong to each other, as a dynamic, cyclic whole.  Home birthing and Hospital birthing the same.  Cultural education and Home education as well.

When you truly look at most indigenous lifestyles in our ancestries, in which we’ve lived in for the majority of our evolution, how did we get here?  Where we send our children off there, to bond with strangers that change regularly, and a bunch of other scared and emotionally undeveloped younglings, to bond with each other?  Behind fences?  And our men off there, to work with other men usually, in work unrelated to their immediate survival, clothing or food.  And our women off elsewhere, be it to groups or services or jobs or home duties, bonding with others in other ways.  And all of this bonding and unbonding of families, is all happening elsewhere, other than our homes.  Our homes have largely become the places we eat and sleep, and nowadays watch screens.  All the important stuff we do is somewhere else.  Our jobs, our passions, our crafts, our trades, all usually happen somewhere other than our homes.  And our relationship to animals has gone from co-dependant relationships that include the land we all live on, working out how to help each other birth, survive, thrive and die with dignity, to a bizarre pet relationship where those without children of their own, or a lack of community love, can translate that bonding instead to a pet, who they love and bond with in the same intensity.  Or we have a complete disregard for any other sentience at all, in the form of factory farming.

We’ve all got a honing instinct as wide as our hearts towards bonding.  And whether it’s with an animal, partner, child, craft, home, land, trade, community, sport, religion, or spirituality, we’ll have it in our lives in some way.  And I’m suggesting that our humanimal potential is to experience bonded love in all those areas.  Or at least a lot more than just one.  If that’s our yen and destiny.  A love to family, home, animals, land, and community, that is bonded and deep, intensely intricate, and eternally interesting.  A love that is as scary as exhilarating, and deep as potentially shattering.  We waft through life with a hundred breathing hearts, connected to our beings with yarns.

And that bonding creates the oxytocic bubbles, that mirror the intense moments of birth, sex, and death, and echo through our existences.  When we connect and truly bond as families, and communities, and at markets and events, we generate a vibration that truly attracts others, hungry for that love and connection.

I’m not sure if there’s a point to all this, except that this is all deeply on my mind and in my heart at the moment.  As we experience awesome bonding with the home where we live.  The animals we live with.  Our journeys together and how attractive they are to the most interesting people.  How through deep bonding to all aspects around us, we’re experiencing self organization on a profound level.  All the aspects we need to continue our bonded and self organized flow together, and around each other, just come.  Without any effort.  The right people and events spill around like pebbles on the creek floor, effortlessly going with the flow or staying put, depending on what’s needed at the time.  Every animal, child, tree or wild animal experience, relates to other things on many different levels.  Taking the steps  towards each other, working out how to mutually benefit from each others existence, rather than harm the co-existant whole. 

Each morning we wake, with a whiff of the potential of just about anything whispering on the wind.  Any person or entity could rock up and we most likely wouldn’t be surprised.  As we sink into our self organized, bonded family, chaotic harmony, a bright buzz whirrs around us.  We’ve got more visitors coming to swing through our realities, than we ever have in our entire relationship.  One tent comes down, and another one goes up!  Things are learnt effortlessly, as valuable mentor relationships spring up all around, our vibrant and authentic children.  So much is packed into our days, that we barely get time to recognize it, before another wild event comes galloping down the road.  So much learning is fast tracked and hacked into, by so many people and lessons on our doorstep. 

We’re learning about each other, and who we really are, and other people, and how they live, and animals, and what they need to thrive, and eat, and how it’s best to be eaten, and personalities, and how deep they root, and the re-spelling of the spells that our great western culture has spelled on our souls.   

And coming across so many other people wanting to travel the same authentic paths.  Into themselves, each other, their homes and land, and other animals.

We live in one of the most diverse communities I’ve ever lived, where the main tenet is respect for every living thing, except for violence or cruelty, which is dealt with in person and directly.  There are so many people with so many philosophies trying so many different ways to live.  So many directives, inspirations, and dreams being striven for.  Nobody really knows how many communities there are in the hills of the Rainbow Region, but there are hundreds, and they’re all different.  I’ve heard tell of communities focused around medieval sword fighting and knightliness, around unschooling, christianity,  womens land, fairy land for men, permaculture, survival anarchy, the desire to share no community at all, solar power, low income earners, activists, and more exotic possibilites of this sort than you could possibly imagine. 

And all these people shop in Nimbin and Lismore, and get together at markets and events, and swap stories and experiences, and I know that it’s a world that could be endlessly explored, and never fully known.  And the experiment is a huge success from everything I’ve seen.  People have learnt compassion and acceptance from their lived experiences. 

It’s fast tracked our family community experience, as a mirror showing it’s face to a world full of mirrors. 

I think the point of all of this is to ask you to jump in.  Wherever you find it, however it moves you, find yourself a community to bond with, with your family if you have one, or if not find a family that needs you.  And dive in!  Experiment!  Realise that the hurts and pains are the equal and opposite on the way to learning how to navigate the stormy waters, leading to the gentle bay of bonded community. 

It’s the only way we’re gonna save ourselves and our planet.  To bond with it and our families and our homes and our lives and care for each other.  Because we’ve recognized our dependance on each other and everything.

Or something like that anyway :)

Older Blog

So 2007 was the year I really started blogging.  And back then, blogs existed in a parallel universe on the internet, and you couldn't really access them from the main part of the net.  They didn't turn up in Google searches, and they were just starting out.  I connected briefly with this amazing African American hooking artist with irrepressible enthusiasm called Gina Renay, and got a bit of interest along the way, and then couldn't get back into it for some reason, and started the blog I write today.

But just in case you're curious, and want to see what an earlier blog of mine would look like, here it is.  It used to be called

Spunout

Enjoy :)

Post Phyber Philosophy Book Launch

And what a perfectly marvellous day for a ebook launch it was.  Even though I charged Currawong and Lilly with taking photos........as I suspected, Currawong was too busy chasing round 4 little boys, and Lilly was just too busy having fun.  So most of the photos were taken by me, at the one point in the day when I had a minute to take them.

Over the years I've really come to terms with my particular form of fame, and it's not big and flashy by any extent of any imagination, but it's quirky, unique, and full of quality instead of quantity.  I get deep and meaningful connections with people more than a broad fan base, and lots of extraordinary yarns.  So over the whole weekend there was a steady stream of gorgeous people sitting with me in my space, telling me stories or letting me tell some, and mentioning at some point how colourful and beautiful my stall was.  An audience makes me purrrr.

And being as my prime directive is to 'make it' in my own way, on my own terms, I reckon an ebook launch at Sustainability Alley at the Nimbin Show, with a self published ebook printed out on recycled paper, and in a loose leaf folder as a display, and a branch full of little pouches/finger puppets/necklaces with usb sticks in them, with two copies of Post Phyber Philosophy - one a pretty version and one a printable one.........is about as good as it gets!  For me anyway.  This was such a close shave, to get it all together in time for Nimbin Show, that I only printed out a full copy of PPP the night before, and finished taking photos for it early friday morning. I did the final check as I printed it out, and Currawong saved all the info to the usb sticks we'd bought, and made sure they all worked.

And then we were up at sparrows fart as we usually are, and surprised ourselves with how easily we organised everything, and the kids, and the animals......  Dreamer who was about to have kittens any day, was being cute in the morning, as she snuck in the rabbits cage to hang out with Fleur and her babies.  

So when we go anywhere for a while, we usually have to take half the house with us.  Food, water, swags, blankets, pillows, toys, changes of clothes, favourite silkies, prams, shade, rugs, and then all my other market stuff as well.  But I love the little autonomous zone that we create wherever we are, and there's something quite special about how at the end of the day, we pack it all up and away and you'd never know that we were there.  Currawong is at the back right of the stall in this photo, wearing his Tinkerbell t-shirt, and his gorgeous floral pants made for him at the Maccy Market.  And underneath my stall you can see the swag that I made for travelling, that I unroll under the table so the boys have somewhere to sleep and hide in the shade.  

And here's the branch I whittled and oiled to use for my display, resplendent in my little pouches full of memory sticks and the Pentapusses :)  With skeins behind them.  That I actually sold two of!  Shock horror.  And don't tell all the people who've been asking to buy them, and told that they were display only.  Like I tell everyone who asks, if you want a skein out of me you've got to work for it, and twist my arm a bit.  Cause it's my palette!  With which to create! But I'm always a bit happy to sell one to someone who really appreciates it, or has a passionate idea that they want to create with it.

And in this photo above, I noticed the mirror, and how I inadvertently took a photo of myself taking a photo.  So of course I had to play with that a little bit....

So does this qualify as a 'selfie'?  Cause if it does, then it's my first :)  I love this photo.  And then a bit later, when my hair had fallen out of its bun, I tried just one more....  And in this photo is the loose leaf folder displaying my ebook.  The page you can see in this one, is a photo description page.  I was showing PPP to a mate just a week before the launch, and as I was telling her a brief yarn of all the photos, she said I should write descriptions in, so people knew what stuff was.  So I did!  Thanks Yollana :)  It's almost an ebook in an of itself :)   And the descriptions of photos built the ebook up to 85 grand pages.

I'm just so thrilled that I've finally done it!  I've been writing this ebook for over 10 years now, and it's full of photos and stories that I've been telling people for years, and there's something so alchemical and magical about actually putting it all down in transcript with visual expressions of us.  

And here's a photo of an unknown man in my mirror, that I didn't know I'd captured till I looked at the photos later.  And a rather gorgeous pic of my Moth Wing Cape, for which there's a pattern in my ebook.  

And here's the Moth Wing Cape from the other side, showing off the spiderwebs rather well, looking into my stall, and giving a bit of an idea of the colourful little island I was on for the weekend.

And I brought the needle felted and crocheted family along for this one too.  As everything was really one big display to launch an ebook, I thought I should bring the gang - especially Ursula, as she's in a few of the photos in my ebook.

And here's PROOF that it was an ebook launch.  EVERYBODY knows that you can't have a book launch without goon and cheese on crackers.  Jatz preferably.  And Nimbin cheese hopefully.  And I had to explain to a few people what goon was.  As in, goon is cask wine of the cheap and nasty sort, and for this special occasion I bought a cask of Sovereign Point, soft and fruity red :)  And every cup and jam jar left in the house.  Being as they are at a premium with so many cheeky little hands that like to fling cups and glasses round.  I washed them and brought them along as a last minute decision on sunday morning, cause there was just no way that I was going to be able to justify to anyone bringing plastic cups.  Being as I was plonked on Sustainable Alley and all.  

I also bought two punnets of strawberries on friday.  Because I knew that the chances of actually keeping them in the fridge for sunday were very slim, but thought that the large number of them may assure some success.  On sunday morning while I was washing every cup and jam jar in the house, Currawong nicely managed to save one of the last punnets from the jaws of rampaging boys, and I discovered another one that had been saved earlier, and was high on a shelf.  So I managed to bring TWO WHOLE punnets to the launch!  Though they didn't make it to the photos :)  And on the table to the left is the Nonapuss!  A hat/puppet with nine tentacles with bells on.  That doubles up as a magpie scarer. 

And here's me enjoying my rather large jam jar of soft fruity red, or as I like to call it......goon.  With Zarra asleep underneath the table no less.  

But what ISN'T in the photos......is all the other people at the launch :)  And like I said in the beginning, there weren't heaps, but the ones that came were very special people to me, and made it huge just by being there.  There was a lot of love and thoughts expressed to me during the weekend, that made me feel truly honoured, by who spared a thought for me and my little ebook :)

I had not one but TWO first buyers.  One of intention, and one of reality.  See, I was rushing along the street of Nimbin one day, and got reminded about how life's not meant to be a rush, so I sat for a hug and a chat, and ended up burbling bout what I was doing, and got earnestly asked if I could sell him my first ebook in a pouch.  Now if I'd been ready earlier than the night before, then I would have been able to work this out just so, but it wasn't quite ready, so my friend made an effort to come to Nimbin Show instead.  BUT.  As I was setting up, a charming man with his partner and mother in law came by to chat, and have a look, and a yarn or two, and he was the first to actually see the printed out ebook, and he loved it, and also the first in person to buy a little pouch.  And I liked him so much, and appreciated the appreciation and time that we all had, that I even sold him a skein of hand spun, and as he was just starting and wanted to crochet, I even balled it up for him, so he wouldn't get it tangled.  So two first customers and both of them MEN!!!  I love it :)  And there was also an elegant and gentle couple that showed up on both days to give moral support and lively conversation.  Been rather thrilled that quite a few gorgeous men have been walking into my life lately..... 

And then when we got home.......I reckon Dreamer waited all of 5 minutes till she jumped in with the baby rabbits and Fleur again.  We thought it was cute, but when it was time to go to bed, Fleur was getting a bit miffed to have Dreamer in her den, so we went to move her........and discovered a kitten underneath her.  There were some beautiful oxytocic moments between her and her kittens and the baby bunnies, but then we had to rehouse the kits so that Dreamer could finish birthing.

And she birthed 4 beautiful little kittens!  All of them tabbies.  One a black tabby, one a grey, and two black and brown.  I love tabbies :)  We're all a bit thrilled that Dreamer and the babies are all okay, and she did a marvellous job for a first time mamma :)  And the next day, when all the baby bunnies were out again, one of them snuck in for a cuddle.  Gotta love love.......

And like a beautiful friend said, 'how appropriate to have two kinds of birth in one day!'

So.  A big day was had all round.  And my eBook, Post Phyber Philosophy, is finally ready for sale.  

If you'd like to purchase a pdf of my eBook, Post Phyber Philosophy, you can do so on my Etsy site  

here.

 

I hope you like it :)

Post Phyber Philosophy

Okay.  So life and extremities have been intense lately, as it always is, and I've got to confess that the mindworm of haters, has made it hard for my desire to yearn towards blogging of late.  And I had a big experience that I'd like to express on here, but am a bit loathe to all at the same time.  So I'm dragging my heels.  And the result is that I haven't even told you that I've very nearly finished writing the book that I've been writing and living for the last 13 years.  Post Phyber Philosophy.  

I was asked to launch it as an Ebook at Sustainability Alley at the Nimbin Show this coming saturday and sunday, so I am.  I've been working on it for months, but kinda stalled at the last minute, a bit of fear of success taking me for a spin for a while.  But with a deadline I'm grooving it, and it's all coming together beautifully.  

I've been a bit stunned and elated, that the passionate crafting, that sees me tempting Currawong into watching in depth media for the night, so I can avidly hook with a head torch, to see what happens next, has come back.  After a very long hiatus, which I realise now, was the lack of an audience.  I don't know about other artists, but for me, an audience is a very important aspect of what I do.  To have people that 'get' it, and love what I do, who are curious and interested, and waiting with bated breath to see what I do next, and appreciative, and lovely, and the main reason why I do this, cause I'm a show off.  And honest :)  

So knowing that there's a bunch of people I know, who I really like, and who really like me, and that they're going to be at the Nimbin Market at least once a month, and I'm going to be there too, and they're going to ask what I've been up to this month, and cause I'm a show off, I've been slipping making into every spare second, and feeling the fire and spirit of the visiting genie, and turning mistakes into features, and alive with it all!

Whereas blogging has turned into watching lots of haters traipse silently through my blog, and a few brilliant comments that make up for so much, but the audience isn't very visible or vocal you know?  I've been really missing the direct interactions with live people who laugh, and giggle, and share oxytocin and ideas.  And I've realised how massive a motivation that audience is for me and how I create.

I've been mourning the lack of passion in my craft since the light dimmed in me!  Which was....ooooo.......the last time that we regularly visited markets and festivals :)  Whether it's doing workshops, or festivals, or markets, or book launches or anything like that........having an interactive audience is just awesome.  And community forming.  And bonding.  And oxytocic.  And was the missing ingredient to my passion.  There just didn't seem to be that much point to it, once I'd made all the things I wanted for our family, unless there were people to appreciate it.

So I've got this little corner of the kitchen, and I've realised that it's my studio and practical shrine and altar to creativity and passion.

And it's where you'll find me as often as I can, often first thing in the morning, and late at night.  The photo below is from before I spunked it up a bit.  Crafting hard with Spiral, making the Slats (sleeves/legwarmers/hats) pattern.

Or sitting right next to my studio/altar/bed, and doing the spinning meditation.  Just lately there's been a big deal going on, like I alluded to before, and it's been a bit of a nail biting experience for large chunks of it, and there's been a lot of physical endurances, and some worry, and a few other emotions thrown in.  And I've found that more and more, rather than turn to many of my other traditionally healthy and unhealthy avoidances, using spinning as a meditation to shut off my babbling brain, and sink into my subconscious and just be for a while.........has been just divine.  I can slip into and out of it easily with my spinning wheel.  And still be present for all the younglings and animals that we're shepherding.  The best thing is, that the beautiful meditation has the result of a ball of yarn.  Something practical that is useful!  And it's made our house colourful with skeins.....

So when there's a spare moment, or when I'm really stressed, or when inspiration strikes and the family allows, I sit and create.

I've been writing patterns for the first time.  And quite successfully too.  At least I hope.  I tried to get some folk to make the Slats pattern on facebook, and lots said they would but no one got back to me, so  I'm just gonna have to go with the flow on that one.  I think it's fairly straightforward!  I've combined photos with explanations, and some of the terms I use are the same used in traditional crochet patterns, so I'm pretty pleased with the result.  

So I'm presently taking photos....

And writing notes......

And collecting photos of my pallette and tools and methods and materials.....

And coming up with kooky creations inspired by appreciation....

These are Pentapusses.  So named, cause they look like octopuses and definitely sea creatures, but they've only got 5 tentacles, and like I described the process on my Hellena Post Creatrix page on fb.....

"Made a hat that had dangly carroty things hanging out the top, and my fingers wanted to go into it, so I thought I'd try and make a puppet for my hand, (which I've threatened to do for a long time), and started out making a long bit for a leg, and then I started an arm - even had a hand with five fingers and everything on it - and played with it to see if it would work. The hand dangled in a way that wasn't very attractive, and to work as a movable hand would need some wire, which would stop it from moving at all, so I pulled the hand apart, and turned it into another leg, and made them all legs, which turned into tentacles, and then when I let it sit on my hand to see what my hand wanted to do........it wanted to move around in a poi like fashion, and swing figure eights, and fly through the air with the greatest of ease, so that's how it turned out. And then I wanted it to be an octopus, but I couldn't work out how to get another 3 legs on, and having them dangle from my palm wouldn't move in the same directed way, so I decided to leave it at five hanging off fingers and leave it at that. And then playing with them with Currawong, he said it needed eyes, so then the eyes came. And then flinging the ends round, I realised that beads or bells would be lethal, so tassles were the way to not turn it into a weapon."

It's also got me and Currawong back into photographing each other and the family, and all the things we do more often.  And Currawong gets to slip photos like this in, when taking photos of me hooking first thing in the morning.  Funny how a lot of his photos end up as cleavage shots :)

I've gotta mention too, that this is all going on as we're going about our daily lives, caught here in a photo by a beloved friend, walking the main street of our home town Nimbin.  And incidentally, with me wearing the moth wing cape that I've made a pattern for, that's in my PPP  Ebook.  By the way, being photographed under the Happy High Herbs sign was totally incidental.....and funny :)

And it's also going on while we've been having one of our busiest times with visitors, and people staying for extended periods, and crafting around them and sometimes onto them, or at least onto their dreads :)  There was a veritable rush on dread cosies and hair extensions for a while there!

But overall.....it's been a tremendously exciting experience as well.  I've been totally blissed out that I feel like my computer skills, software, hardware, photos, and the ibooks author template, have all come together in an alchemical magical act.  Had a minor freakout, when I thought yesterday that the ibooks author program was going to only let me publish through ibooks, and charge 30% on all my books!  Thought for a minute I was going to have to copy and paste the whole bloody lot to a free program.  but I got my genius IT expert daughter Jess onto it, and she worked out that it was all fine, as long as I kept my book as a PDF, which I was going to do anyway.  I'm absolutely over the moon with how it came together.  I'm still finishing it off as we speak, but I'm gonna make it on time for Nimbin Show, even if I have to pull off an all nighter.  Might even try and get some wine and nibbles for my little one hour launch :)  Here's the first page to show you how it looks.

And all 70 plus (haven't quite finished it yet!) pages, of photos and stories and patterns, will be available as a PDF file on my Etsy site, and you can also email me (address in my list of places on the right further down).  So you can download my book, or buy it in a crocheted necklace pouch, that also doubles up as a finger puppet.  $20 for the PDF download, and $25 for the crocheted pouch and usb stick.  I"ll keep you posted :)

P.S.  So it's been a little while since my launch now, and I'll post a link to my Etsy page now, just in case you want to go over and check it all out.  

Enter Etsy here

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