Self Taught and Unruly Episode 1

2025 has been a year of intense learning and personal realisations. Triggered largely by going to Uni again after 25 years, and all the changes that have been happening in academia during that time.

But deep learning and healing have been occurring.

Paradoxically, the University of Tasmania has been the most extraordinary place of validation and recognition of my self taught learnings I could have hoped for. Even if unintentionally, what I gleaned from my studies was how magnificent and effective my divergent thinking, improvising, self organising, default mode network inducing lifestyle has been all these years, determined to do things in my own way and time. And how much neural goodness I crafted for myself along the way.

I also realised that I've been chasing around looking for a ladder to climb or a publisher/guild/festival/magazine/exhibition/external validation to help me share what I want to share with the world..........when I could just film what it is and do it myself on a podcast!

So here goes. I know it's full of flaws, but it's been a steep learning curve where I thought I was going crazy more than once. Fair warning, there's a bit in the middle where I get an unexpected visitor, and there's lot's of loud laughing that could hurt sensitive ears! I will try and make sure I work better with that in future.

This is my first attempt at a podcast covering all things self taught and unruly, starting off with spinning, as one of my first truly self taught skills. Venturing into origin stories and paradox along the way. Introducing some of my creations and using this as a learning experience, even after editing, I saw many mistakes that I made! In the future I'd really like to tell some yarns and share some quirky techniques improvised on my self taught path, along with a bit of show and tell with all the creations I have sitting in suitcases. I'd also love to read you blog posts from the past, as I believe I did some of my best writing when on fire with a birthing blog post. And people tell me I have a lovely reading voice. My family especially think so. Lovely and soothing. So soothing they all fall asleep when I read to them. Could be a hidden talent? And there's four or so books I've written I'd like to read you also, but more about them another time. I'm also up for challenges! I love the thrill of chasing a shape or a concept, especially when it tickles my imagination! Throw me a yarn, and I just might whip it up using a series of knots, into a fantastical and energetic creation. In this episode I talk (even though tremendously distracted by spinning) about Aileen Stace, a truly iconic woman of New Zealand. And going back to read again about her life on the page I'll link to below, I realised how perfect she really is to illustrate the wonders of teaching oneself, as she received no formal schooling, and taught herself a great deal. Anyway, I hope you enjoy, and please feel free to give me constructive criticism,....... at least I started instead of waiting for everything to be perfect :) Let me know what you think?

https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/5s38/stace-aileen-mary

Learning At Home

There are so many ways of learning at home.  So many people willing to tell you the rules and the do's and the don'ts.  I came across this beautiful photo blog post the other day, and it inspired me.....

We first put our feet on the path when we had a little Griffyn, nearing 5, and his best mate and side kick Lilly, who was always ready to don a cape or a sword, or to play dead.

After shopping through South Australia and Victoria for schools, we all came to the decision that we'd rather stay together, and homeschool.  Or unschool us, in particular, while we learnt from idle parenting, slow parenting, self organisation, Sir Ken Robinson, and life experience.

We've observed and learnt from neuroscience and ethnopaediatrics and attachment parenting, and realised that it's all about bonding.  Bonding is given nowhere near enough attention, as it's the glue that holds us all together.  

Bonding is what the roman empire, who is still in control of our planet by the way, learnt early how to disrupt, break, and undo, in order to keep their conquered lands conquered.  

Bonding is what our indigenous ancestors knew in their relationships with their families, lands, animals and homes.   Bonding is what glues all our groups and people together. It's what we're prepared to fight and die for.

Instead of going off to a special place to learn, with a whole bunch of other unattached children their own age, we stay together and bond as a family.  We find that we're all learning all the time, in everything we do, and with everyone we meet.

We started off being such purists, wanting them to eat only organic, never watch television, have no gadgets, be sheltered from the world.

But we learnt that through forbidding things, we made them far more tempting.  Balance is essential in everything.  Especially as they're going to venture into the world where everything is possible.  We need to prepare them.  

So they play, and negotiate, and self organise, and flow around each other and around our life situations, and feel their way into interactions with family always at their backs.  

As our family kept growing, there was always someone to play with, someone who was patient, and something going on.

We've always lived in rural situations, on communities, or with family, trying our best to live and share with other people.

Which has brought out the best and worst, in us and other people.  And taught our kids a lot along the way, about relationships, and sharing, and projection and denial.  

But we've been there for each other, as a big tribe or mob.

Our kids spend a lot of time laughing and playing and telling each other stories, and we support them in their interests, and follow as far as we can down the rabbit holes with them.

Whatever we're doing, whether it's making, learning, gaming, playing or crafting, it's likely we'll have company.  We like doing things together.

We've also learnt about how amazing it is to have a father as part of our lives, not off working and seen on weekends.  A dad who's part of everyday life and living and learning.

We've learnt from animals, most especially about life and death, from our environment and surroundings, we've learnt from documentaries, Google and Youtube, games - both on screen and in real life, we've learnt from everything we can lay our hands on or imagine.

Even watching tends to be a contact sport.  They know all about product placement, and marketing strategies, and how much it will challenge us if they sing us some ads.  

I really love what Michael Leunig had to say about learning from life.

"Well they learn, you see, children want to learn.  I think healthy children just, you can't stop them learning and so you've got to provide, it's a matter of provision.  You create an environment where they are keen and eager to, and curious, and so, for instance, my daughter, Minna, loves her horses.  She has a couple of horses and the horse is the teacher at that point.  When they're walking across the paddock, paddock is the teacher, the snake that crawls in front of them is the teacher.  When they're helping fix a fence or fix the pump, that is the teacher.  Children's eyes go to things, they sparkle when they see something, so you say, "OK, we'll go there.  We follow that".  You follow things."

He also said at the end of his homeschooling process,

"Everything I believed has come true - their eagerness to learn is intact,"

The First Day Of The Rest Of My Fibre Career......

Two weeks ago today, I had the tremendous pleasure of being asked to come to a beautiful yurt and show a group of women how to spin.  The wonderful Alice Moffett (who also took all these gorgeous photos), heard about me from someone who had seen me at the Blue Knob Farmers Market Fibre Festival, found me on Facebook, and then made it as easy as she possibly could, for me to turn up and share some spinning stories and inspirations.  

It was a real yurt from Mongolia, complete with horsehair rope and felt lining, put up 

by it's owner and her close group of friends.  Truly inspirational to be in and feel.

Got a lift from a dear friend and her little one, and Lilly came along too for the adventure.  First thing I did was rock up and spill my fleeces, skeins, crochet hooks, books, creatures, and fibre majicks all over her yurt :)  And started telling them stories as I did, all about how there's no 'proper' way to do anything, only your way to find, about the history of spinning and the spinning wheel, a perspective on it from archaic times to modern, and maybe most importantly to me..........the concept of how everything is connected and remembers where it's been.  And what we put on the biggest organs of our body (our skin) is important to have nice memories.  

I love other people's perceptions on what is photo worthy  :)

Lilly and Honu sitting with the various creatures.

Showing off crochet hooks whilst sporting a rather spectacular snake tattoo.

Skeins, fleeces, wool bag, hooks...

Searching for tools to get the spinning wheel spinning.

After the basics, we moved onto checking out the beautiful wheels that the lovely Chris, owner of the yurt had, and I showed her how to give them a basic service, and get them going.  We started out with learning how to spin, and getting the concept that there's the clockwise and anticlockwise spin, that are the two parts of the yarn whole.  First we spin, either way, and then we ply, which has to be the opposite way to the way it was spun.  Spinning is putting the twist into raw fleece, and plying is unspinning it round another yarn or thread.  

Here's Chris, her beloved dog, her mother sitting on the bed,
and her spinning wheel that we got humming along sweetly.

And her second wheel, which was a gorgeous little upright wheel,
probably locally made, which is common in the world of spinning.

Beautiful elegant lines on this upright wheel,
one of the nicest ones I've seen in my travels.

Sweet Marina probably listening to me telling her that there's no such thing as a mistake
when learning how to spin, and how it's like learning to drive, using feet
and hands at the same time, and it takes a while to get the hang of it.

Most likely saying something like "You're doing perfectly,
 and this is exactly the best way to learn, by just feeling it out".

We also covered drop spindling briefly, and I showed them how to make rope.  Chris took to it instantly, and loved my explanation of how this was like the perfectly balanced yarn, creating it with your hands only, and with both the spins built into each part of it.  She really dug the concept of being able to twist anything into rope with this method.  And what made it even more special for her (and me), was that the raw fleece she was using, came from a loved sheep of her mothers!

Using her mums fleece, and asking Lilly to hold onto the beginning,
I demonstrated to Chris how to twist rope into being.

The raw fleece doesn't have to be prepared in any way, except for thinning it out as you twist.
Check out Lilly's fingernails with the nail polish not quite cleaned off!

We were both so impressed with how delightful a process rope making was for Chris,
and she kept going on with the yarn I'd pulled out to show her, till it was all
beautifully roped up.  Love her angel wings in this photo :)

I also gave them a bit of a tour of some of the things I'd made, letting them try on and play with whatever they liked, and showing off some of my design tips as inspiration for them to make their own things their own way.

I do love these moth wings, and how they wrap round your fingers.

After years of doing markets and festivals, I've learnt the art of squooshing as much information into a tiny portion of time as I possibly can.  So all my stories about spinning had large dollops of other concepts I'm passionate about thrown in as well, like self organisation, and the gifting economy, and trust and surrender.  There was a gorgeous woman with her baby (I'm so sorry I forgot your name) who REALLY wasn't into crafting, but sat and observed and listened nonetheless.  And after all the hurly burly was mostly over, she came up to chat more about some of the other concepts we'd discussed, and I was so glad, that even though crafting wasn't her thing, she still enjoyed herself and was stimulated by the stories.  She really dug how a yarn was a physical as well as metaphorical yarn all at the same time.

Chris's mum and the gorgeous mamma on the bed.

And I reckon my most favourite moment of the whole event, that really sums up what I love so much about my chosen field, was this precious moment, when Chris was having a go on my wheel, (My Little Gem, the Rolls Royce of spinning wheels no less) spinning some of her mothers sheep fleece.

Such a beautiful photo.

She was talking to her mum about the sheep, (forgot his name too), and what he did when her mum fed him.  They had this warm moment of reminiscence about the sheep, while she was spinning some of her first yarn, which was all perfectly big and chunky and bobbly and full of character, as your first yarn always is.  And as I was winding her first yarn into a ball, I told them all how perfect that was, to be talking about the sheep whilst spinning his fleece, full of his memories of living with her mum, and how much he loved her in his coat, while her mum was listening, and there was oxytocic bonding, and all of that went into the yarn, and would be held in it's memory forever.  How gorgeous is that?

I did the whole thing by donation, and only realised in doing it, what a perfect way it would be to make a living from living.  On my own terms, having a real life adventure and meeting new people, who are already interested in what I have so much passion for, that I'd do it for free.  It's like all the best bits of the markets and festivals I've done over the years, but being able to connect directly with people already curious, rather than trawling through a whole bunch of totally uninterested ones.   Spontaneous and unpredictable enough to keep me engaged.  In person, instead of on the internet, which never really worked for me with the fibre feeling thing.  So inspiring to do, that I forgot about time, and the whole thing left me feeling charged and energised.  And almost like a party plan for my book.  Cause when folk have met me, they often feel they'd like to keep a bit of me.  Which my book certainly is.....

Even though a lot of people (and me), get a good giggle about how there's not that many things that I have that are actually for sale, and I leave just about everyone with the statement from Aileen Stace about how 'spinning's not something you BUY, spinning's something you DO!'.....there always is the odd thing that can be coerced out of me with trade or swap or donation or cash.  So a few skeins or yarns found a new home, and as a last leaving I showed them how to create a centre pull ball on a rolled up piece of paper.  

Started off with holding the skein around my knees, old fashioned way...

Then Lilly kindly offered to hold the skein and make the ball winding easier for me.
Lilly was a huge hit at the session, had some awesome conversations, and
really connected with Chris in their love of animals.

Telling a story and obviously incredulous about something.....
But look at that ball!

So I guess what I'm saying is.......to help me in my quest of bringing back the 70's Fibre Revolution, and making a living from living, I'm up for coming just about anywhere, anytime (bit like the Goodies), and sharing whatever skills I have, with all the stories that seem to come with me, and we'll all have a lot of fun :)  Schools, festivals, communities, interest groups, friends, whoever, whatever, just contact me and we can work something out.  If it's appropriate, the whole family circus could come along, with some drums, and some dancing and big family energy.  

I think this is a very exciting installation in this journey I'm on.