The Meaningful Stitch Episode 6

hello there welcome to the meaningful stitch this is episode six and i'm amy palko i'm coming to you from edinburgh scotland and this is my digital home from home so a place where i get to share with you my knitting practice and my knitting projects today's podcast is going to be a little different than the ones before because i'm going to be announcing the winners of our giveaway which i announced last time and i'm also going to be answering the questions well some of the questions that uh that you left for me in that last podcast i got over 500 questions so if i answered them all i would be here for a very long time and you'd get very bored of me i'm sure but i have managed to go through all the questions i've picked out a variety of different ones from a few different themes that kind of really presented in the in the questions and i'm gonna go through those so if you are new to this podcast then please know this is not the normal way of how i do my podcasts so you might want to go back and watch one of the previous episodes for a taste of what you would more normally get and next time in a couple of weeks when i record my next podcast i'm going to be sharing all the knitting that i've been doing in the meantime so i'll be catching you up on all of that so that's still to come still something to look forward to but before then i'm going to tackle these questions so before i do all of that as always i would draw a an oracle card for us and the deck that i've been using up till now has mostly been the sacred rebel or oracle deck but this time i decided to use a different a different oracle deck of mine which is this one it's the fairies oracle by brian frowd you might recognize the name he did the dark crystal for one for what he's done many things but one of the things he did was a dark crystal and i drew this card for us which i think is a lovely one when we are going to be doing a question and answer session so hi drew lozguna look at her isn't she fabulous lozguna is the frog queen and when you draw her from the deck she symbolizes sunken treasure discovery of self and adventure the guidebook itself is very fun and it's written in quite an irreverent style so i just want to read you a little bit from that because i think it's very good fun she says have you ever noticed how people tend not to explore the territory they live in how they only visit the special places there when they're trying to entertain someone from out of town we do the same thing with so many aspects of our lives and then sometimes we grumble that life is dull life is always adventurous for adventurous people and boring for boring people my grandmother told me this when i was nine and i expect she got it from las guna she also told me that if i didn't have anything interesting to do i might as well clean up my room i took this lesson to heart and so can you i might um if life seems boring and you feel stuck in your puddle either explore the parts of the puddle you haven't really seen before or jump out and do something new and interesting i'm sure you dear reader are not a bored or boring person boring people don't read books like this or i would add watch podcasts like this so it's a good fun card i think it really invites in this place of inquiry and looking at our lives as special which is something which i think is a really lovely message for every single one of us and certainly a message that i'm taking to heart at the moment as i attempt to answer your questions but also as i approach my birthday which is tomorrow so i'm really leaning into this invitation to see our lives as special and it makes me think as well of that wonderful quote from the james hillman book the souls code that we dull our lives by the way we conceive them a good friend of mine kathleen really loves that quote and has told me that several times i think it's it's such a powerful important reminder and that we are all invited to hold our lives as special and so i want to say thank you before i before i move on to all the questions and things and for asking all those wonderful questions and because they really do they really did allow me to go back over and think about what my answers would be and to conceive of my life as special and i would really invite all of you to do the same thing okay so before we move into the questions i just wanted to do the announcement for the giveaway if you remember i was giving away three sets of the cocoon tree bags so these were project bags with matching notions purses and so i'm going to go through each of the prizes again and tell you who the winner is i selected the winner at random from the from the comments that had been left and so the first one i want to share with you so this is for the mediterranean sunrise bag with the matching notions purse which has got these beautiful little ducks on it and this is a lovely velvety bag with this beautiful woven silvery fabric at the bottom and there's the cocoon tree logo and of course it's got the the tassels on the zip and inside we have the matching the matching duck lining isn't it gorgeous so this very special prize package is going to baronessa so i will be getting in touch with all of these people through the comments that they left on the the last podcast and i would just invite you to get back in touch with me with your with your details so that i can send these out so this is baronessa well done the second uh prize that is going out is this heathered check bag and again it's the large project bag size and the matching the matching notions purse and again they've got this beautiful lining it's just so beautifully finished off and the tassel and it's the matching lining inside isn't that just beautiful so this prize is going to look at my notes john summerside so joan this is coming to you my love and like i said i'm going to get in touch with you through the last comment the comment where you asked your question and invite you to get in touch with me so i can get that sent out to you and the last pro the last prize is this project bag which is the medium size so it's slightly smaller with its matching it's matching notions purse again we've got this beautiful lining inside and this is teal floral and it's also got this beautiful woven fabric at the bottom as well and it's got its tassel and its handle and so this is going to go to josie don pierre so well done my love and like i said i'm gonna get in touch with you and uh congratulations congratulations to all the winners and if you didn't win don't worry uh there are bags still available on the cocoon trees from her cup from her current update on her etsy shop and so you can go and check those out and and maybe treat yourself and as we move closer and closer to christmas i think sometimes it's a good idea to treat ourselves before we get to the present buying okay so next up i'm going to start tackling these questions like i said there was a lot of questions and there was a lot of questions that fell into very particular themes and so i've tried to put together those those questions and and respond to them so that we can kind of move through them in a bit of an order i suppose but there is a lot so i'm hoping that um this is not going to be terribly long and boring for you and that uh that you're going to enjoy it and get something out of it too and i hope that we get to know each other a bit better because that's really the whole point of this so the first questions are all about the podcast so hackmar anne asked how did you come up with the name of your podcast the meaningful stitch i think naming products offerings podcasts books whatever classes um is actually one of the hardest things to do and we can get really hung up on it so for me i sat and i knitted of course and really tried to think about what was the message that i wanted to convey with this podcast what did i want people to know about their knitting and their making what did i want them to know about my knitting and my making and i think one of the most important things was that every stitch holds meaning that this practice that we are all engaged in here is it holds importance and it holds significance that is even greater than the final product that the very practice and progress and process of our knitting is valuable and valued and i really wanted to reflect that i wanted us to be able to dive a little bit deeper below the surface of patterns and yarns and into what these projects actually mean for us and what is the message that we're trying to communicate with these with these projects and with these knitting practices so that was really why i started to circle this concept of the meaningful stitch and i'm really happy with it i'm really pleased that i feel it does it ticks all the boxes for me so if you are struggling to name something and you're getting caught up with that perhaps think about what is the experience that you want people to receive from what you're what it is that you're offering uh whether that's a new business or whether that's a book or what is the what's the nub of the message that you are trying to communicate with what it is that you're creating because i feel like the meaningful stitch does that for me here carol weymouth asks have you have you got any public speaking experience and if so does that make podcasting on youtube more comfortable well i do have some public speaking experience because i was a university teacher for a number of years and so i would teach small groups but i would also teach large enlarged lecture theaters and that was a that was a scary and and exhilarating experience sometimes i did much prefer doing the small group teaching i would really like to create an intimate atmosphere and really curate the experience of of that group and and that teaching experience so so yes i do have some public speaking experience and all and also um when i was doing research into literature i would go to international conferences and i would present academic papers at those as well so that would be to to audiences of my peers and so so yes i do have some experience of it does it make it easier um i suppose i i don't really know because i don't know what what the opposite would be i've not not podcasted before i had it so um but i suppose it might do it does make you more aware of of how you communicate and how you want to connect what you want to deliver through your through your messaging what tone you want to take and how you want to invite your audience into this into this experience that we're co-creating together so i think it does make you think a lot more about those kinds of of things so that it perhaps becomes easier to create that in a digital format but like i said i've not had the opposite experience so i don't really know if it makes it easier or not spirit bridger asks was it scary when you first got started podcasting it is scary because it's a scary thing to put ourselves out into the world you know we are we're taught we have this part of our lizard brain which really asks us to stay still stay quiet you know don't make a don't make a scene don't draw attention to yourself and and so we really have to battle that part of ourselves to be able to show up and more fully shine and yet we're so beautifully rewarded when we do or certainly that's my experience so yes it is uh it is an unnerving thing to put oneself out there into the world and yet absolutely worth it so okay moving on from the podcast questions we're going to start the family questions there was quite a lot of questions about my family so the first question is from mike and emma wilson and she asks i would like to ask for you to tell us more about your parents and how they ended up in france well i know that my mum and dad watch so hi mom and dad in france so we used to go to france on our summer holidays as a large family group so with grandparents and aunties and uncles and it was always a lot of fun we would and get some self-catering accommodation close to a beach i would visit creperies we'd see the fireworks on bastille day it was always very magical and my parents always really loved france and so when my dad retired gosh it must be about six years ago now they decided that that was where they wanted to live now that dad wasn't tied to the to the hospital where he was working uh they had the opportunity to go to wherever they wanted and so they decided that they wanted to move to france and they found a beautiful part of france to live in which has strong scottish connections through the through the whisky making process and the cognac making process and um and they live in a lovely property surrounded by vineyards and they both speak fluent french and and they're very happy there so which is a lovely thing so they live over there and we live over here and we go and try and visit each other a few times throughout the year which is nice because we get to spend these long periods of time together unlike when they lived over here we would go and visit we would maybe go for dinner or pop around for coffee and spend a couple of hours with each other but now when we see one another we get to spend say two three weeks together and that's very different that kind of quality of time you get to spend with with your loved ones in that way so that's that's very lovely and of course with technology too as we get to we get to catch up and spend time with each other through through face time for which i'm i'm very grateful to so that's how they ended up in france sally journey asks how are you going how are you finding ways to keep close to the people around you during this covert time going into this winter i'm wondering how to keep connected with that layer of people outside of my pod it's very difficult i think covid has really created situations where we are becoming increasingly isolated and from one another and that's a very painful thing actually so it really requires us i think to to reach out and connect in a variety of different ways i think as i was saying technology is certainly one of those ways i find that we have family whatsapp groups that that are absolutely vital for us so we can connect with other other members of the family that live in different parts of the country that we would normally be seeing on a more regular basis but currently are not seeing very much of each other right now um as we are coming into winter and we are facing more restrictions and more lockdown conditions i decided that it would be a lovely thing to create a film club with some of my family and so i've started the process of of doing that so that we can have some things to share together so i think film clubs book clubs having things that we can enjoy together apart or a part together so that we can have conversations about and it gives us new material to bring into our conversations which i think when we're not going out and not very much seems to be happening we can kind of run out of run out of material but i think when we are watching movies together or we're reading books together we're experiencing art together that really gives us the opportunity to bring that into into our our conversations the other thing and this is something that my mom and dad mum and i have done last year and we're doing it again this year is we've created advent calendars for each other using our yarn stashes and buying some yarn in as well and so we're right we've wrapped up all the individual balls or skeins of yarn and sent them over to each other and so that we have something new to open a small gift for each day leading up to advent so i think that's a lovely way to to communicate and connect with one another in a more tangible way also i would use the example of the birds of a feather shawl that my mom and i knitted two versions of using the same yarn so there was that point of connection too that we were creating something that was distinct and individual to each of us but were was absolutely knitted um in tandem and so we we have these these items these shawls these soul skins almost that we get to that that share an affinity with one another and so i think that has really helped us to to strengthen our loving connection there too and i would also say that you know i'm continually reading and sharing articles with with people that i love i'm always interested in continuing to reach out and make those make those positive points of connection and receiving those positive points of connection things that make us laugh i've got uh i've got a group uh message thread that i have with my children when we're always sending each other memes and funny videos and things finding things that you know speak to family and jokes and i think that's uh i think bringing humor into is also a really important important part of of staying connected okay i find that your family name is hungarian do you agree and if yes can you tell us more about it ah sofia barta yes my second name is hungarian amy palko palco is a hungarian name and that is because my husband is hungarian so we got married it will be 23 years this sunday that's our 23rd anniversary the day after my birthday and um yes so he and his family emigrated out to australia when he was two years old and then he left australia i think when he was 28 years old and i met him the following year and so so yes and he is we got married fairly quickly and uh we've been we've lived in scotland ever since so so yes my second name is hungarian i don't speak very much hungarian my daughter speaks some hungarian and my husband is fluent hungarian so hungarian culture and traditions and language are still very much a part of our of our household but it is an exceptionally difficult language to learn i learned some latin languages i suppose when i was when i was a teenager so spanish and italian and french but hungarian is a very differently constructed language and so one that doesn't necessarily come easy i can understand a lot more of it than i can speak let's put it that way so what is the best lesson or advice that you got from your mum this is from inna chick well gosh lots of things one of the things that makes me think of is one of the things my mom tells me is what's for me won't go past me which i think is a very scottish saying but basically it means that you know there's no point in getting stressed and upset about something because if it's meant to happen it will be meant to happen so we can we can stop worrying we can stop being anxious about it because it's already in a process of unfolding and if it's meant to be then it will be so that's certainly one of the pieces of advice but i would say actually perhaps an even more important one would be about creative bravery i think my mum is a very brave and courageous woman and pursues her creativity and her self-expression from that place and so that has led her all over the world and chasing down teachers and classes and new modalities she is an exceptional artist she makes beautiful artist books and most recently she has just tackled the most amazing knit it is a jumper from one of the old round magazines and it is the most phenomenal piece of intarsia you have ever seen in your life and so she uh she very bravely tackled that and has been working on that for the last five weeks and has just recently completed so seeing the way that she approaches her knitting her artistic practice and her love of um self-expression and mastering new skills and i think that's been a that's been a lovely thing to to witness and and to learn from do any of your kids knit amethyst 19 yes my daughter knits my daughter is a continental style nutero though she didn't used to be she was uh an english-style knitter like myself but aurora is uh left-handed and so knitting with holding her yarn in her right hand was really very problematic for her and was so she was quite slow and laborious with with her knitting but now that she knits continental with the yarn held in her left hand she's sped off significantly and in fact she's just finished off a beautiful pair of fingerless and gloves so with the little little fingers in some gorgeous yarn which i think is an aran weight from old maiden ant that she picked up at edinburgh yarn festival a couple of years ago and i would say too that that going to edinburgh yarn festival with my daughter and with my mum has been a really lovely thing the last few years and obviously it didn't run this year and it doesn't look like it's going to run next year so i am hoping that it's going to going to return so that so that um i can return to going to that with my with my daughter and my mum but my boys don't knit i can't really imagine them than picking up a ball of yarn and knitting uh jessica ray asks i'd like to know what's your advice for raising teenage boys don't make them knit [Laughter] no i would say the most important thing in raising teenage boys is to keep the channels of communication open and to remain as non-judgmental as possible which is sometimes an impossible task and you really want to reach in and and say i told you so or to direct them along a particular path uh but you have to do i think with quite a light touch and to eat dinner together i think eating dinner eating meals together is important i think creating family experiences and creating the invitations to join you in those experiences are important creating memories together and a lot of that kind of work i suppose is done earlier on in in their childhood but it's something that continues i think that teenage boys are are i love teenagers um i think they have wonderful ways of looking at the world i think they have so much to teach us i think if we really respect that and we honor that rather than undermining it and thinking that we know better all the time breeds a respectful relationship between between you and it can also be incredibly challenging and incredibly difficult and i think some of the most challenging moments i would say that as a parent that i've experienced would be those times when the your kids are out at night time and you have to go to bed and then you're lying in bed waiting for them to come home and you're wondering if they're okay and all of that i find that very str i have found that very stressful but i'm trusting in their resilience and that it's something that you have invested in and and also knowing that they will make mistakes but if they're they are resilient enough and that you'll be there to help pick up the pcs as and when you're required to and yeah it's raising teenagers is not easy boys or girls but i think keeping the channels of communication open is the best piece of advice i could possibly give you how many generations of knitters are in your family from diane giannini we have no idea so i know that well obviously i know that my grandparents knit my grandma knits my gran on my other side is also also next to and has knitted two i wouldn't say she's as enthusiastic and knitter as my grandma on my other side has been but i certainly know that she has knitted in the past and has enjoyed it and beyond that well i know that going down the line of my gran she is from her father's from orkney and she has inherited a spinning wheel so i'm assuming that there were spinning as in those gener in that generational line and so that probably meant there was knitters too and on the other side of the family with my grandma my grandad who are from fife we have a wonderful photograph actually of my great-grandad who died i think when i was about 15-16 so his father was a wonderful feral knitter and he would do the knitting and his wife my great-great-grandma would do the seaming she would sew all up for him so this photograph that we have is of my great-granddad wearing a fair isle vest that his father had knitted for him and he my great-great-grandfather that did the knitting was actually a miner and who had lost a finger so you can only imagine that's not doesn't make for terribly easy easy knitting but he did absolutely beautiful work so beyond that i mean i would imagine somebody must have taught him and so yes we don't really know how many generations of of knitters there are but what i do know is it goes back as far as we can remember and it's being passed down through the through the next generation so the younger the younger generations are learning also so it's going in both directions which is a lovely a lovely thing and i think it really speaks to the health of the practice and the the value that it really brings us one last family question do you have any pets and if so what are their names jackie rock i do not have any pets i don't have it i haven't i have never owned a cat i've never owned a dog they have occasionally owned fish but our last fish was called gill and with his trusty sidekick fin but that was a while ago now and and so we don't have any we don't have any pets at all we generally for the last 10 years have lived in rented accommodation and that tends to make having pets quite difficult and so so yeah i'm afraid we don't have any pets okay on to food i had quite a few food questions so i've chosen two the first is do you have a recommendation when it comes to a recipe well i have a recommendation when it comes to a recipe book which is this one this is the moosewood cookery book by molly katzen it's a vegetarian cookbook we are not vegetarian in this household and but we do enjoy um vegetarian cooking and this is a book that my mum used to cook meals for us from when we were little so a lot of the flavors and some of the special recipes in this book really remind me of my of my childhood and give me that taste of home so to speak so some of my favorites in this book is the arabian squash casserole which is delicious and i love some of their soup recipes as well they have a beautiful cauliflower cheese soup they have one of the best um recipes for tomato sauce that i've ever found it's got a really lovely recipe for tabbouleh and some great pie recipes too so there's an apple and custard pie and a pumpkin pie that just absolutely yeah have the flavors of home for me so the mousse food cookie book would be my would be my go-to for a recipe to recommend to you and sharon w asks my question is what is your favorite go-to comfort food for a scottish winter day well scottish people love their soup so it would have to be a lentil soup i think my brother makes a particularly good lentil soup so so that's what i would choose my brother's lentil soup we do have lots of like new companies springing up that are offering new varieties of soup new flavors of soup that really draw on more and world cuisine i suppose but but i do love the the very traditional soups like leaking potato or scotch broth my grandad makes a wonderful scotch broth so so yes i can wax lyrical about soup for a while but not quite as long as my friend jen can know because she loves she loves a good soup don't you love the next questions are all about the goddesses so i had mentioned in my first podcast that i am a goddess guide and that's what that's how i make my living that's that's what my that's what my business is is offering goddess guidance so i had quite a lot of questions about this uh understandably so some a lot of people ask saying things like they they've never heard of a goddess guide and you know what was it and how did i become one and the the honest truth is is that the the reason why you haven't heard of a goddess guide is because i made the word up i made the term so i decided uh what would be the best way to describe what i do what would be my job title if i could give myself one and that's the job title i gave myself so if you've not heard of a goddess guide before that's probably why but it does very accurately describe what it is that i do so and i'll and i'll go on to that in a bit so the first question i have is could you please share more about how you've transitioned from university work to what you offer your clients now so uh throughout my 20s i really focused in on my academic work so i did my undergraduate and my master's and my phd all at stirling university focusing in on english literature and on story because i love story and so i'm really very well trained in spotting patterns and creating new frameworks for seeing i've done a lot of teaching i've taught but i've taught hundreds of students from first year through to master's students looking at narrative and characterization and so all of that was was kind of what my my background is really and from there when i finished up doing my phd or just as i was coming towards the end of it i went to their the business advice people at the university that that i went to and asked them you know i have all of these skills what kind of business do you think i could create and they were not terribly helpful i have to say and told me that they could give me an office and a phone so not really knowing what i would do with an office or a phone at that point i decided not to take them up on it but it really and it really got me thinking about well what what is it that i can provide what kind of support can i give and i think the best kind of support we can give is was one that's authentically grounded in what has worked for us and so for me that's absolutely been my my goddess path my goddess guidance explorations and the way in which they've supported me to more fully show up and engage with my life so kelly keeps says i would be interested to know what it means to be a goddess guide could you tell us something about this work that you do so i think that well to begin with there are so many goddesses there's so many stories so many wonderful myths and a myth is basically a way of describing something a way of of understanding something which is inherently uh you know difficult to understand otherwise and it speaks to us about human behavior about why we do the things that we do so in order to understand our own behavioral patternings better one of the things we can do is we can look at myth and we can look at these particular archetypes these particular characters these gods and goddesses from these stories and see how they play out and then looking at their stories as metaphors for particular parts and pieces of our own psyche our own self so in that way these archetypes really allow us to create mirrors to to reflect ourselves back to ourselves so we can enter into greater seeing greater awareness greater consciousness about who we are and i think what that does is that it deepens our sense of self-acceptance i mean it's very difficult to accept parts of ourselves when we can't even see them so by shining a light on these different facets of self we get to move into deeper and a deeper place of self-acceptance and then from that place we get to move out into the world offering um offering greater empathy and compassion to all and i would say that's the macro of of what it is i want to achieve with my business in a more granular sense i have a number of offerings and products that i that i do throughout the year and they basically range from annual readings so i do the my word goddess readings which launch at the end of this month and they run for two months so if you want to know who your goddess of the year is going to be i have a pdf creation and that that will that will connect you up to a goddess that you can explore and through a variety of different creative practices so that's a lot of fun i do monthly readings as well so people can apply for people can sign up for a subscription so they receive a monthly reading i do one-on-one sessions through zoom so i meet up with clients and we speak about the material of their lives and what's showing up for them and who the goddess are for there for them for that month is and how that goddess can provide some deeper understanding and clearer seeing for them and and the material that they're that they're working through i draw upon tarot cards and oracle cards in these sessions and we also look at astrological charts as well because i've been studying those for but last gosh coming up for nine years of astrological study so looking at goddess asteroids in particular and where they they're positioned in charts so i do that too i have offered in the past business circles and creativity circles i've offered particular or facebook groups that allow us to look at particular god essays together and i have offered selfie workshops before so looking through the medium of self portraiture as a way of reflecting back different aspects of the goddess as it's reflected in us and as we as we express her so there's a variety of different offerings that i that i give as ways of connecting in or offering points of connection to the goddess in general so so yeah that's a little bit of of what i do it's good fun lady dreamwalker asks could you share a particular goddess archetype you work most closely with yourself and have you found that it she has changed over time one of the goddesses that i work most closely with is a greek goddess called hestia or vesta to the to the romans she's the goddess of the inner hearth she is the goddess of home of promises and of practice so i think of her as a goddess of the inward turning spiral so when i'm feeling very scattered and very um overextended she's the goddess that helps me pull my energy back so that i can tend to my inner flame which and i know something that we've discussed here before a few episodes back so what is this inner hearth what is this vital spark what is it that i can do to take best care of that hestia is really the goddess that i lean into that offers me some deeper understandings of how to do that she's an incredibly important goddess to me she's one of the very first god essays that i connected to through a visualization that i created for myself and i've always found her very um a very strong sense of support and peace and ease so whenever i'm feeling at um out of ease with myself she's the one that calls me back in to listen to my own inner voice my own inner guidance and really come back to a place of center so i would say that's that's one particular goddess that i connect very deeply to and continues to be a very strong source of support because you know what times well look at the times that we're currently living through you know both politically and with the public health crisis and economic crisis so all these crises are moving through the social atmosphere and when all of that is occurring then i think it really does help us to to really connect in with ourselves find our point find our center point find that place to come back to and and vesta hestia really helps me to do that i also feel as though she's very present in my and my craft and in my practice so for me a practice is any action that is repeated with intent so absolutely my knitting fits into this and i think of hestia as a as a goddess that helps that guides us towards a meditation of hands and of body so about trying to get us out back out of our head trying to disinvest from those um negative fantasies um anxieties fears and worries come back into the body and move through this meditation of hands and and for me knitting is really a meditation of hands so again that's that's another way in which i really connect still to to hestia what advice would you give a woman in her thirties growing into her forties regarding body and soul is there something i should consider well if you haven't read it already i would say read my favorite book [Laughter] so women who run with the wolves as written by clarissa pincole estes and you may have heard of it before because it is it's an older book now i think it came out in the 1970s or 1980s and let me see oh no 1992. there you go it's not as old as i thought but 1992. uh it is a wonderful collection of stories and analyses and it's looking at the very particular archetype of the wild women and so it looks at some goddess narratives but mostly is looking at archetypes from fairy and folktale and so it's got some retellings of that and then some deeper explorations of the archetype of the wild woman and how she and how she shows up in all of her various guises and how we can track her both in the stories that are important to us but also in our own lives and in our feelings and in our desires and so i would say that if you haven't read this book yet and you're entering into your 40s i would absolutely get yourself a copy now it apologies because can you tell it's my favorite book it's falling apart oh dear um i would say that it is a thick book and it's a dense book it's a lot of people hear about this book and buy it and then they start reading it and they don't get very far with it and so my recommendation would be to look at the contents page pages here and read the titles read the stories and go for the chapter that most calls to you rather than reading it in chronological order or sequential order choose your own sequence with it go to the chapter that you think intuitively is going to meet you in this particular moment with whatever it is that you're struggling with and and read it that way and then once you've read that chapter digested it explored it walked with it knitted with it had conversations about it and have a look go back again to the to the chat to the contents page and choose your next chapter so i think for me the best way to approach this book and it's something that i've guided a lot of other women through is um to do a choose your own adventure style um of approach to this to this particular text and that might help you to guide your own red thread through the through the chapters and the stories but yes i would say men and women in their 30s 20s 30s 40s 50s 60s 70s 80s and in fact i gave it to my daughter for her 16th birthday and because i think it's an incredibly important text and that we should all have her have her very battered copies of it because it's been so well read so that would be my advice my question is this is from suzanne walker given your work with goddess archetypes have you any thoughts about whether there is a more feminine version or interpretation of the classic heroes journey structure used in storytelling so if you're not familiar with the hero's journey it's very much about um there being a crisis within the household of some sort and so the need to leave home go on your quest go on your adventure meet your challenges overcome your obstacles uh receive the gifts or the the bounty from from your quest and then return home and so that's the hero's journey it's about moving outside into the external and then coming back and reconnecting and integrating that outward journey with the inner i would say the heroine's journey is actually a narrative of dissent i think we're asked to come right back into what is present for us and to go on an experience that way rather than moving out the the call is to move in and then having integrated what we discover within about giving that some form of outer expression and i think the hero's journey and the heroine's journey are both important to all men and women you know and i think um the the topic of gender is a very problematic one and so i would really like to move beyond uh talking about women's journeys and men's journeys and whether it's a good book for man or for women i think these are these are journeys these these like the goddess archetypes and are available to us all you know this is all part this is all our inheritance this is all material that and medicine that is available to all of us so so that the heroine's journey is just as big as available to men as the hero's journey is available to to women and and to everybody so so yes that would be that would be my thoughts around that so there are some really interesting goddess narratives that very explicitly explore the heroine's journey of descent so you might want to look at the narrative of inanna and her descent to visit her sister irish kagel in the underworld you might want to explore persephone which might be a slightly more familiar goddess to you from the ancient greek when she is abducted into the underworld and becomes ultimately becomes the queen of the underworld and the other narrative from the ancient greeks is the narrative of psyche who has to move through a number of tasks to be reunited with her love eros but also in the fourth task also includes an underworld visit and so also speaks to a narrative of dissent so so yeah some things to explore and the last one is from nadine to zay and she asks what is the connection between goddesses and knitting so i suppose i kind of already answered that one with connection to to vesta and hestia this meditation of hands but you know i also connected to um a goddess like ariadne you know ariadne and the labyrinth she's the one that provided the red thread to perseus so that he could find his way into the heart of the labyrinth and find the minotaur and then find his way back home again so i think of her as the goddess of the red thread and i think of the the thread the yarn that i'm working with is very much the stuff of my own life you know and i get to make whatever i want from it i get to frog it i get to re-knit it i get to to you know weave in new colors i get to learn new skills i get to explore new patterns new textures new fibres and and through all of that i'm really exploring my my self-expression i'm exploring my heritage i'm exploring what my own personal legacy is and all of that i think is this red thread that we used through the labyrinthine passages of my own of my own personal existence of my day-to-day life as it's lived in this moment but also you know this this life that i'm curating and creating as um as the years go by and which you know ultimately and you know i think of my of these beautiful shawls that i've been creating or these beautiful garments um and they will outlive me for a time and i think you know having that and that tangible expression of me in this particular moment this particular existence this particular lifetime is that that red thread that moves from from my generations before me from my existence right now and then forward and into the future so also makes me think of the the mori which has the three fates you know the front again from the from the greeks so you have the the goddesses that that spin and measure and cut the threads of life you know and i think of them quite often when i'm when i'm engaging in an artistic project and particularly with my with my knitting practice and my craft so there are lots of there are lots of goddesses there's also arachne who is the goddess but she's the one that was turned into a spider by athena for daring to challenge athena to uh to a tapestry making a contest athena is actually our goddess of crafts and so she's the one that helps us to perceive of what the finished object is going to be before we've even cast on our first stitch she helps us to to plan out our our in our stages our sections are the bigger picture is already imagined before we actually start to tackle it and she's also the one that helps us to use the the tools and the problem solving at our disposal when we come across challenges so that we can really bring our project home so there are lots of god essays that i think i think the goddesses provide frameworks for seeing any aspect of our life so if we want to use these archetypes to see our craft to see our knitting they absolutely offer us insight into that we want to look at them to offer us insight into the way we parent into the way that we make art into the way that we relate with our partners into the way that we show up for our communities you know whatever whatever it is i think the god essays provide mirrors they provide these perspectives these frameworks for seeing that help us to understand ourselves our motivations and our conditionings better and ultimately hopefully help us to align more fully with our desires and our values so that we can continue showing up in integrity and with great love and and empathy and kindness for ourselves and for others okay so moving on from the goddesses here i cannot tell you how many questions i got about my hair i'm afraid you're going to be terribly disappointed with my answers so i chose one of the questions this is by crystal degrott hep and she says uh i'm of your beautiful hair color i'm wondering if that is natural and if it's your natural silver gray i'd love to know what what color your hair was before it went that color and i'd love to see a full picture of you from years past if you're inclined to share now i'm going to pop some photographs onto my instagram so you can see the colors of my hair before it went this color because this is my natural color and i don't i don't dye it at all and this is the color that it has gone i started going gray from a very early age in my early 20s in fact i probably had a few gray hairs when i was a teenager but really i would say it was when i was about 22 23 that i formed very strong streaks of of silver through my through my hair and then by the time i was 30 i'd pretty much gone completely this kind of color although i would say over the last 10 years it's much it's much lighter so it's continuing to it's continuing to to go its way and and to change i i don't do anything really to my hair to to um to look after it particularly well i suppose i described i was laughing with my mom yesterday i said i would really describe my my hair care routine as one of as one of neglect to a certain extent i i wash it every couple of days with a normal with just an ordinary shampoo and conditioner that you know just a commercial one i tend to use um intensive hair masks as conditioner because gray hair and or hair that is that is changed mature hair tends to be a little bit coarser and drier so you might need to have a bit more extra moisture in your in your conditioner so i tend to use like intensive masks as regular conditioner and i don't dry my hair so it doesn't get any heat on it i let it dry by itself and i don't use any products in it so there you go that was a that was a short answer but my hair color before was actually uh well when i was when i was a little girl it was a very strong shade of kind of a red gold i suppose and then as i got older my hair darkened and so it was a kind of a rich auburn shade and then obviously that that lightened up significantly through my 20s and 30s until i am the age that i am now okay so next questions is about colors not about the color of my hair but about the color of my yarns and my and my art so michelle legg asked do you have an art background that gives you the skills to be so creative with color and the answer to that is no i don't i don't have an art background and i suppose i have a human arts and humanities background because my um my academic background is in literature but not in the visual arts and so and i just wanted to kind of underscore that because i don't think you need a formal academic training or or professional experience of color to be able to be playful with it and to enjoy it i i think that's available to all of us and vera pillman asked where do you get your inspiration for creating such beautiful color combination i would say that i have i move through real love affairs with colors and that will vary depending on the season so for example in the summer time i love a really hot pink coral paired with like an army green or a or a spicy mustard i love those shades together and paired up with some like dark wood jewelry and some tan leather accessories i'm i'm so there for that i love that in the winter time i love moving back into these beautiful kind of burgundy shades and rich golds and cinnamons and all of those kind of and rust all of those lovely lovely rich shades i love a hot red as well like a really beautiful scarlet i love black as well i love to wear black i think it's very dramatic um i don't think there is any colors that i don't really like i would say i don't tend to wear cool colors i tend to wear hot or warm colors uh that's just because of my own coloring and what suits me so i don't wear a white because when i do i look like death warmed up i can wear like off-white i can wear ivory but i don't tend to that's that's maybe one color that i really don't move towards or not really a color but um but yes i don't i don't tend to to go towards the more light or cool shades i tend to try and keep a warm a warm palette and as for inspiration i'm always looking for inspiration i love instagram i love looking to see what colors people are putting together i love when i'm out and about looking at um unexpected color pairings quite often when you see like groups of people walking down the street and they're all wearing different colors so they've not necessarily put the colors together but you get to see like what do these shades look like together i love looking at artwork and looking at the the colors that people have paired in there in their art and and what else i think color is there to be played with you know i don't think it's something to feel um nervous about or afraid of or shy of i think it's something to be explored it's something to be enjoyed and so i think you just allow yourself to be pulled to cut towards the colours that you love most and that make your heart happy because how could that be how could that be a wrong color combination oh one last idea is i love looking at i mean we have so many incredibly creative makers in our community like uh and one of those kinds of makers is yarn dyers and yarn dyers have such an amazing eye for color and they put together these beautiful tonal palettes or they create beautiful variegated yarns with with speckles now one of the things i like to do is look at those variegated yarns and see what kinds of colors are they putting together and then maybe separating some of them out into more solid tonals and then exploring that within one particular one particular pattern one particular design one particular shawl so um so yes that's certainly another another sort of place to look for inspiration but really you know in this in this community we are so incredibly blessed because we're surrounded by gorgeous colour inspiration so so you'll see everywhere when you develop the eye for it when you're looking out for it you see it everywhere you can't not see it okay so not surprisingly i got a lot of knitting questions so i'm going to go through them and see how many i'm going to get through gosh i've still got so many questions here i'm not sure i'm going to get through all of these at all [Laughter] so anyway maybe some shorter answers to this to the knitting questions i'm probably not starting with this one though my question is what is your knitting journey who taught you to knit and how old were you have you knit ever since or have you had periods in your life when you didn't knit so my grandma taught me how to knit i remember learning how to do finger knitting you know when you you create your slip stitch and then you put your fingers through and you catch the yarn and you pull it through to create the next and then the next like little bird that goes through and picks out the worm through the hole and then pulls up so remember doing that lots and lots um as a little girl and also we would do the you know my grandma would give us an old spool that had four nails um knocked into it and we would we would create um these kind of long tubes of knitted knitted fabric by um by with a crochet hook and taking the yarn over the top of each one of the nails and moving wrapping the yarn around and creating our stitches that way so that would come out the bottom of the of the spool and then we would wind them all together and sew them to make like coasters or placemats or that kind of thing i cannot remember the first sort of properly knitted thing that i ever that i ever made i do remember learning it's doing knitting at school but i do know that i already knew how to knit when i was at school so this is probably when i was about seven years old so it was really the first time i did colour work and it was just very simple and we were making uh these holders for our recording for our recorders [Music] i wasn't very good at playing the recorder but i was quite good at making the case for the recorder and mine was in kind of a mustard a gold shade and a maroon like a burgundy and the color work that we did was we knitted a bit in burgundy and then we would do like two in burgundy and two in mustard two in burgundy and two mustard and then repeat it for another row and then just move into the mustard so we had like this kind of crossover check and that would that would help you transition from one shade to the other so i remember doing that um and then i probably didn't knit terribly much as i don't remember knitting as a teenager much at all um until i got about the age of 18 19 19 really and that was when i got pregnant with my daughter and so i think quite often we find that that when we're expecting babies into the world we return to our knitting practice and that was certainly the case for me so knitting baby garments knitting jumpers for my husband knitting myself some jumpers and so so yeah i would say for probably from about the age of 19 i've kind of knitted fairly consistently on and off but but relatively consistently and then very intensively knitting probably over the last gosh five six years knitting every single day um and i do knit every single day and one of the questions that i have been asked is you must have magical powers because my question is how do you knit so fast and i was also asked the question of how many hours in a day that i knit well i can't tell you how many hours in a day um although when my husband read that question he laughed and said all of them well i can tell you i don't know all the hours in the day because i do do other things but and blend it first thing when i wake up in the morning and if every evening and if i have time off in the afternoons i'll say you know any any time that i have and that's not being invested in in my work or in my family or in in other pursuits it goes into knitting so i wouldn't say that i'm a super fast knitter i would say that i'm a frequent knitter and i'm a fluid knitter because i hold a lot of muscle memory in my hands so the the motions of of knitting are very well practiced and so there is a fluidity to my knitting style i would say that lends itself to uh to the the rapid creation i suppose of fabric but and but i am a like i said i am an english style thrower um in my knitting style which is traditionally a slower style than perhaps continental i know that a lot of people and try and learn continental as a faster way and i can do continental knitting i don't like the tension that i get from continental knitting so it's really only something i do when i am doing brioche i do the brioche knit stitches continental because it saves my my wrist and from bringing the yarn back and forward and i also use continental knitting for colour work when i'm doing two colour colour work so i'll throw with one hand and i'll pick with the other but other than that um i would always i would always do hold the hat hold the yarn in my right hand and and so yeah i don't have magical powers but i do knit a lot i had a lovely question here from um adele kalinan and she says um her daughter aiden is 12 years old and she wants to know if there is any pattern you want to start but you think is too challenging currently now i think this is something i love this question aiden so i think a lot of people are are intimidated and scared to start knitting patterns they think that there's going to be something that's going to be particularly difficult and so they build it up and then they don't start but actually what my experience is is that the best way to learn how to do it is just to start it and to overcome the challenges and the obstacles as we meet them that said my friend jen gave me this book last year from my birthday so i've had this book for a year and i look at it often because it is such a beautiful book it's glamory by alice star moore and it is a spectacularly beautiful book look at this it's just stunning an amazing gift and there are so many patterns in it that i want to knit but they are on they are more complex so i'm sitting with those going i really want to do that and so your question has really galvanized this for me and this is one of the garments that i really want to knit because i love this collar so this is the raven poncho you see that isn't it absolutely amazing so she also has the raven cardigan which i will find for you so she has it like this with quite a small collar or she has this fabulous one which i love which is this one it looks like feathers i love feathers i love birds and so i'm really thinking that this cardigan could be in my very near future so yes to answer your question i think that would be quite a challenging knit but it's not one that i'm scared of and it's not one i don't think i'm up to because i don't believe there's any there's any project that if we don't put our mind to and take our time and and take it step by step and call in the helpers you know whenever we need an advice or guidance there's always people out here in the community um online or maybe in your family that you can that you can call on and ask for help you can call on me and ask for help and i'd be more than happy to to support you and uh and yeah so if there is a if there's a pattern that you've got your eye on and that you think is maybe going to be a little bit challenging and my my words of encouragement would be to start and then see how you get on and call in the helpers as and when you need okay so what's the next question uh what do you find yourself knitting when you need something soothing for your soul melanie coogan that would be the um of the garter goodness shawl by stephen west which is this one here you see this one it's beautiful and i have another one of those as well so i i find that when i get very stressed the garter goodness is the one was the one that i'm turning to but i would also say that this current half and half triangles wrap that i'm knitting which is also a lot of garter is also a very soothing project too so anything that involves a lot of garter and little shaping i think would be what i find most soothing uh somebody asked where is it what's my oh there's linda swan i'm wondering what the favorite project that you have that you have knitted i would say it's always the most recent one so i will show you this i won't talk about it much just now because um i will talk about it more next time but this is just off the blocking mat and this is a slip stitch extravaganza by stephen west which is now no longer a mystery thank evans uh because october is now over and so i can share it properly with you but this is just off the blocking mat so i would say that my favorite item is always the one that i've just finished this is the one i've just finished so this is currently my favorite but like i said i will give you all the details and i'll tell you all about that next time i would also say that what i'm wearing is actually one of my favorites and this is another stephen west pattern it is the world magic sweater and i knitted it for my 40th birthday and so it's used it uses a lot of different yarns a lot more hair and i chose these kind of shades of opal and dark wine and gold as my as my color palette and i'll just stand up so that you can you can see it more beautifully i love this moss stitch section and then we've got the back so it is huge and incredibly beautiful very soft nice for hugs so i would say this is one of this was a lot of fun to make and it's a modular knit so you really don't know kind of when you're knitting the first time you don't know where it's going you don't really understand how it's all going to fit together you don't it doesn't really look like a jumper certainly not one that i've ever knitted before and the the construction is fascinating and then i think uh linda from barbad's once described this process as being like painting with yarn and it really is so we get this opportunity to really play with and with the effect of holding two different strands of of yarn together and adding in more hair and then seeing how that that creates color shifts and changes and combinations and and so this was a really fun knit one that i loved a lot okay can you recommend a shawl pattern that would be relatively easy to intermediate mary kay linowski helen stewart does wonderful shawl patterns highly recommend them she has a wonderful way of writing patterns so that they're situated within a spreadsheet so you can every single row is listed as a separate in a as a separate cell so you can really take it one row at a time you can tick them off so you don't lose your place and i would say that if you've not knitted charles before that would be a very good place to start and going through her back catalogue and seeing if there's ones there that you would like to that you would like to explore you'd like to tackle but uh yeah i would say helen stewart is is your as your designer uh what are my favorite needles i love chai gu needles and it's because of i love the lace tips so i like a sharp uh point and i think that's partially because i don't do the picking because i know when you do picking you're thinking sometimes sharp tips can sometimes hurt your finger and also i don't tend to use the top of my finger to push my my needle and when i'm throwing so i like to have a sharp point and to go through my yarn it makes it makes the process smoother for me and i would also say that the cable because it's stainless steel it doesn't hold memory so it always holds it's always pretty straight and it doesn't coil back in on itself which i can find can be a bit annoying and the other needles that i use are interchangeable higher higher sharps and which i also which i love for sweater knitting in particular do have a favorite knit designer oh i do love steven west [Laughter] i also love hockey locately i think her patter our constructions of garments are fascinating and very innovative beautifully described and i love andrea maury's patterns i really like her sweater patterns these tend to fit me very well and i think her and her shawl patterns are very meditative uh what i love erica huser's uh colour work accessories i think the the colour work patterns from inspired by nature are among the most beautiful i've ever seen so i would i would also include her in my my favorite knitters and obviously alice starmore who's i've not knitted yet but i do love her work so and do have a favorite place online to have a favorite online shop to buy yarn in the uk amelia mcbride baker i love mid-winter yarns which is situated just outside edinburgh the the owner brings in the most fabulous selection of yarns that's where you can find your snailden yarn the old centrum yarns and uh yeah i really like her and i like i like her ethos she also does beautiful lithuanian linen as well so yeah midwinter yarns i think is my favorite online shop to buy yarn i'd like to know which is your favorite yarn to use and why love mohair i love the fluff even although i'm really finding with wearing face masks that almost every single face mask that i own has more hair fluff on the inside of it so it it tickles my nose every time i'm in a shop at the moment but and i love moe here because i love what what it can do i love how it helps us to to fade from one color to another i love how it changes and creates um very subtle morals and so so yes i would say that that's a big favorite of mine a lot i do love rustic guys i've just been really enjoying using this whole super soft and i'm so impressed with how how it's knitted up and bloomed in in this this particular one so this particular shawl so i would say that's also that's a new favorite and i am also currently knitting i had a sneaky recast on and i'm knitting with some massim bfl blend from ginger twist called massim mayhem and it's wonderful too oh and gotland i love gotland yarn that and la biename helix yarn was just i would really love to treat myself to some more of that helix i would say i think somebody asked me what would be the yarn that would my kind of fantasy yarn and i think it might be the labianum anime helix and what is your favorite thing to knit from marty boss um shawls i would say lots and lots of shawls okay next quest next set of questions gosh i'm gonna have to speed up a little bit here hobbies uh alana snow what are you reading now i'm still reading the over story by richard powers but i'm also reading the wild places by robert mcfarlane i'm really very into um ecological spirituality right now and i'm enjoying finding out more about that and connecting more with the natural world uh travel have you ever traveled to canada and also if you could where would you go for a holiday so i have traveled to canada i love canada i've been to montreal i had to go and deliver a paper at the international gothic association and i gave a paper on stephen king and the pop-up book of the girl who loved tom gordon and the gothic heroine so there you go i actually spent a good couple of weeks in montreal and had an absolute blast i loved every moment of it i would absolutely go back so if i could go for a holiday i would i would go back to montreal but i'd love to go and explore a bit more of canada because i've heard it's a big place [Laughter] have i ever been or ever wanted to visit australia dot from oz uh yes i have been to australia i've been twice because i'm married to an australian citizen so so i haven't been in a long time but we have been over twice his family lived in melbourne and so both times we spent uh six weeks in australia in victoria and we visited so many different places everywhere from port ferry and along the we traveled along the the otway ranges i think it is and then we went along to 90 mile beach and we stayed in meetung uh we also went up to mildura and uh we visited the mungo national park and we went to ballarat to the the gold mining um event place which we just loved that was so much fun got really good memories of that and of course melbourne with its wonderful places to eat and the melbourne zoo and we went to phillip island and the mornington peninsula and uh yeah just wilson's prom yeah lots of lots of very fond memories and and would again i've heard that australia is pretty big too so we probably were to go and explore at some point but once we've moved past all of this all of this awful good stuff kieber wants to know if i've ever been to the us and if so which area did you visit i've been to the us quite a lot so the first time i went to the us i think we went to florida when i was to to disney to disney world when i was little and then i went to new york i went to new york for st patrick's day as a surprise celebration for my mom's 40th birthday and i was 16 and i think uh we stayed in san francisco i think when i was 18 for a three-week holiday um and then as an adult um i've been back to san francisco because my very good friend kathleen lives there and we've been on some road trips down to los angeles and up to portland and so that's but that was always a lot of fun i'd love to do more of that in the future and um i've been to boston a couple of times to go and do uh to give papers at academic conferences and i've also been up to maine because my phd focused on the work of stephen king the working career of stephen king so i had to go to the university of maine in orono and i did three or four weeks research there looking through the papers and the archives in the library there so i think that's everywhere that i've been so i've not really managed to do much of the south or of the middle so lots more still to explore there too if you didn't live in scotland where in the world would you choose to live from mary london hi mary i i think i would probably move to france because yeah move closer to mom and dad enjoy some of that lovely sunshine those wonderful food markets the wine there's just so much to love over there uh okay scotland i've got lots of scotland questions uh my question for you is what about edinburgh do you love the most norma smith well norma i think is probably it's popular i would say it's actually it's familiarity i've lived in edinburgh since i was a little girl and i've um moved out and then moved back at various different points but i would say that it's it's familiarity it feels like home to me um i love its green spaces i love the creamy color of the sandstone and the way the light hits it first thing in the morning and last thing at night i love the big landmarks of arthur's seat and the castle and blackford hill because you know no matter where you move through the city i feel like you can always kind of orientate yourself and i love the good food the good restaurants i love the fun pubs i love the people i love the cobbled streets i love the little boutiques um yeah i love the parks just love lots and lots of things about it i love leith as well leith feels to me like how edinburgh was when i was a teenager and so is it is going through a period of quite rapid change right now but i would say that that leith and newington kind of still hold um that sense of of nostalgic edinburgh for me perhaps heather wilson though asked the last time that she says that last time she was in edinburgh must be about 40 years ago and she asked me what things have changed that i wish hadn't i would say that edinburgh has really suffered from the plague of airbnb so a lot of um a lot of areas in edinburgh have kind of been cleared out of residence and i think that's quite sad um and i think the other thing has been the popularity of harry potter and harry potter tourism uh which while it's been lovely and has brought and you know income and economy to to the area and and certainly tourists are incredibly important to the edinburgh economy i'd say kind of the disney vacation of some of the the shops and things and kind of trying to cater to that and kind of works against the specialness of the place um so i would say i would say some of that too but what can you do these are just there's there's so many you know lovely things that that that it kind of crowds out the more negative i would say what's my favorite yarn shops in edinburgh so i love being inspired which is uh b inspired fibres which is in march month which is me which is run by a wonderful lady called me and she has really beautiful yarn selection i would say ginger twist which is run by jess where she sells her own hand dyed as well as an assortment of other brands like west yorkshire spinners and so i think i would absolutely say that she's one of my favorites too and the other there's another two independent uh yarn shops in edinburgh which is kathy's knits she does sort of more scottish uh breeds and scottish brands uh and she's just off bro oh she's on broughton road uh which is just off york place so very central and also very central is macquarie's which is uh down frederick street and that's a rowan stockist so those are the main independent those are the four independent yarn shops um that you can you can check out in edinburgh in glasgow if you're interested the place you need to go is the yarn cake so uh okay have i always lived in edinburgh no i've not i have lived quite a few places in in scotland i've lived in ayrshire over on the west coast the south west coast um i've lived on the north coast the north west tip of scotland so very up the very top i was born in sterling right in the very middle of the central belt and i've lived in haddington in east lothian so just outside of edinburgh and so yeah i've lived in a variety of different places in and around um scotland but eli ellie got ellie gaudio i think your name is and she'd like to know um have i always lived in scotland because i don't have a strong scottish accent i have always lived in scotland i haven't lived anywhere else and this has been my home for my whole life and i think i've got i do have a scottish accent and but obviously it's not it's not particularly strong to me and i don't think it's particularly strong to anybody else as i said i have done a lot of and teaching and public speaking uh delivering uh the academic papers and things to a wide audience and a wide range of um of people for whom english isn't necessarily their first language or that they they come from other places where they're not necessarily going to be used to a particularly strong scottish accent and so i think perhaps i have cultivated an accent which is perhaps a bit softer and is more easily understandable and and clearer to clear to communicate because communication is incredibly important to me it's important to be understood and and so i love my accent and i love scottish accents and i would absolutely intend to hold on to onto my own and i also want to be understood so perhaps the combination of that has resulted in the way that i speak but that's only bringing kind of that analytical perspective to that because really otherwise i just speak how i speak so i would say i probably have quite an edinburgh accent i think people from people who know um scottish accents and people who are from edinburgh would recognize my accent as particularly coming from edinburgh um and that is the other thing i would say too is that accents are quite we talk about a scottish accent but um accents vary a lot in in scotland so you could go maybe even just like two miles down the road and encounter quite a different accent uh one that you would still recognize as scottish but it would sound different to the ear and so so that's something which i think particularly if you come from someplace like america or australia these are canada these very very large countries i think that there is accent there absolutely is accent variation from one place to another but i think because we are a much smaller country and we're much more condensed that the accent variation is very rapid from like one village to the next and and so there is no such thing necessarily as a homogenous scottish accent and there is accents that can be recognized as scottish and hopefully mine's one of those okay uh calm so many people asking me how how do i manage to stay so calm maureen candles wonders and do i lose my temper much no i don't i don't lose my temper much at all and i think anger is very important and it's an important energy to be expressed and possibly to be channeled and certainly to be released um in in positive ways and to create change i think that's incredibly important thing but but as for losing my temper i'm i would say that i'm a very even tempered person uh anger is not something that comes terribly quickly i would say i'm much more of a slow burn um so yes i don't i don't lose my temper uh how do i manage to stay so calm eleni malindraki is asking uh i think calm is well won actually i'm not sure anybody just you know like a swan gracefully glides calmly through their existence and i don't think life is lived as a as a one note existence it's a one note experience i think we are all multi-dimensional multifaceted and within that we all have the capacity to experience the full spectrum of our emotions and feelings and i'm no exception i'm no exception to that and i i think anxiety is certainly something that i've experienced and continue to experience and i think you know moving through the particular times that we are if we're not experiencing some kind of stress i would be i'd be very surprised you know i think it's something that's that's very prevalent and something that we're asked to engage with and to to root into and ground into um and find our and find our central point i would say certainly my knitting practice is incredibly important to my um holding on to my sense of self in such a fragmented and chaotic world if i can come back to the present come back to the here and now find my breath find my center point reconnect with that that inner flame and i think all of those kinds of things really really help to to help me to maintain an uneven keel and whilst you know just underscoring that that you know calm isn't what we what i experience all the time you know i do think it's a i do think calm is something that i project i think it's something that i try and intentionally nurture in the species that i hold so that they feel safe and they feel secure and strong and nurturing species they feel like spaces for strong connection they feel like spaces where people can show up and be their their full selves and feel accepted that's that's the qualities that's the values that i want to transmit and i want people to encounter when they engage with me and so i suppose holding on to that level of intentionality as well contributes to that that sense of calm that maybe you feel when you're when you're watching one of my podcasts okay spirituality i'm zipping through these questions now what is your horoscope sign well as i mentioned before i've studied astrology for the last eight nine years now so i can tell you that my son is in scorpio my moon is an aquarius and my rising sign or my ac is um in sagittarius directly conjunct neptune now what all of that means we could go into for a very long time but if you if you speak astrological shorthand then you're probably nodding and going if you ever want to explore astrology with me a little bit more maybe let me know and uh because i've been thinking a bit more about ways in which to to expand explorations around that particularly looking at goddess asteroids because the wonderful thing about goddess asteroids is that we can we can put them into our own personal charts and we can see for example where the goddess artemis occurs within our chart or where hestia lives in your chart or where ariadne lives in your chart so so we can look at all of those kinds of things and i find that really fascinating both in my own chart and and peering into other people's uh my question is this is from sue webb my question is did you know from a young age that you had a strong spiritual sense now my dad talks about how one evening i got terribly upset because i became convinced that when i would fall asleep that i would astrally project my soul out of my body and then it might not be able to find its way back home again so so i don't know how old i was when i was um when i was crying and very upset over there but i was probably about seven or eight so it was pretty pretty young they also laugh over the time that i asked them and was the baby jesus born with the help of pliers so i can only anticipate that i had been at sunday school and in another instance had encountered the concept of forceps and had put the two together and became very interested about how the baby jesus came into the world and i was very young at that stage so [Laughter] so i do think that um i certainly remember being fascinated by ghosts and stranger currencies and i used to i used to buy a copy of the 14 times every every month i was fascinated by things like spontaneous combustion and um astro astral planes and all kinds of things so um so yeah my my interest has always been towards the mysterious and uh and i think in that way the mystery has always been very willing to step forward and and um and enter into play with me you know so okay so little big knits so this is selma and because you are someone who delves into the spiritual in a variety of ways what is it that you do to lift yourself up when you are down i ask this because i feel that so many people are experiencing such an array of emotions these days maybe some who would otherwise not under normal circumstances i think getting out into nature is actually one of the best ways that we can lift ourselves up when we're feeling a bit down i think coming into an encounter with big trees i think walking beside water i think feeling the ground beneath our feet smelling the smells of the earth and of the air hearing the birds song i think all of that is incredibly elevating for the soul and really helps us to unplug from some of those um stories that are being spun that we can get so caught up in and so anxious and stressed about that actually the the walking in nature i think really helps us to come back into our bodies to be a bit more present to where we are right now with what's occurring so that we can then consciously choose how we engage with with those stories and rather than being swept up in them uh okay one last one for spiritual i think lexi wilbon asks what little nuggets of magic or faith do you tuck into your everyday life i i have a belief that i'm special i don't believe that i'm any more special than anybody else i believe in everybody's specialness mine included so i think that life is an incredibly precious thing i think it's something to be cherished i think it has a myriad of expressions i find it completely fascinating and beautiful and awe-inspiring in its richness and it's in its complexity and that's through the way in which it expresses in myself and how it expresses through everybody and everything and i think looking with that lens that really looks to see the specialness looks to see the preciousness of everything that i'm encountering is something there's something magical and something which really informs i think not only my my own personal sense of self but um also informs my sense of gratitude and appreciation for everybody and everything that i come into into an engagement with everything that i meet i really want to see the specialness and i do see the specialness in you and i think that's i think that's a magical thing so yeah oracle cards lots of oracle card questions so i brought out a few to show you so somebody oh who was it tammy jake asks do you use tarot as well as oracle cards yes i do i use this tarot deck every day this is the wild unknown tarot by kim and it's the deck that i use with all my clown on all my client calls it is a traditional it's traditional tarot in the sense that it has the the court cards and the major arcana and things but it's not traditional images like so but i find them very powerful images and so very effective so i use this deck exactly i use this deck every day and whether that's to draw a card for myself or whether it's to draw cards for my clients um on my calls on my one-on-one calls i also use this deck in my monthly goddess guidance readings the pdfs that go out on the first of the month and i tend to do a large tarot reading in the my word goddess readings that go out in december and january so so that's probably my most my most used deck would be that one uh somebody asked for a recommendation for oh there you go i'd like to know if there's a particular deck of cards you'd recommend it's a starting point starting point for goddess um this is one of my starting points this is the goddess oracle and it's by amy sofia marishinsky and it's illustrated by hirana yanto and i like this deck because it doesn't present the goddesses as kind of these kind of glossy cosmopolitan cover stars which some of them are i just i find it much i find it easier to connect with there's there's a nana with her sister irish kagel i mentioned earlier it's morgana morgan lafay so uh i find that that's a very good deck so if you're looking for a goddess deck i would say i can't go far wrong with that one i recently just got this deck which is called the wii star oracle which is a really stunning deck which my friend and rhea just bought for me from my for my birthday and this is the first card that i drew which i just cut to just now isn't it gorgeous like a cell key selkies are very important imagery for me important stories so that was a lovely gift which i wanted to share with you and the other oracle deck i was going to share with you is this one which is also by kim kranz it's the wild unknown archetypes deck and lovely box and the guidebook and these are circular oracle cards i use these a lot as well use these at least once a week in um group calls that i that i do and [Music] i think these are fantastic they move through a variety of different archetypes the archetypal selves archetypal places arc like that the threshold and archetypal tools and archetypal initiations so there's a tool which is the vow and see if i can find one of the initiations um the initiations are like a kairos and um alethea for truth and apocalypta and all kinds of things like that they're they're fascinating it's got a very good guide which i would recommend that you that you read alongside it to begin with just to give you a good starting place and there's some really interesting spreads that you can that you can explore and i intend to use one of those tomorrow when i do myself a birthday reading if you are completely new to oracle decks uh my recommendation would be to again to stay very playful with them and uh somebody asked let me see where's this question uh do you choose a card each day to make decisions about your day or just use them for entertainment and this is from debra mason and my answer to that is that i wouldn't say i use them for either of those things i use them in the same way as i use they are the goddess archetypes so they provide me with frameworks for seeing my world they're reflecting back aspects of myself that perhaps i'm not seeing that my attention is being drawn to it's asking me to come into awareness about something and so or to think about something or to to focus on it and to reveal something that i didn't already know about myself and my psyche and my soul so that's why i use oracle cards that's how i would recommend that you use oracle cards i don't think they're there to dictate um the the order or the meaning of our lives i don't think they i don't use them as um divination tools i'm not for seeing the future with them and they are mirroring back to me parts of my soul parts of my psyche which are calling to be recognized calling to be seen calling to be honored and brought into brought into the family of things and be integrated so that's why i use them and within that you know they they take me on on journeys into into stories and into metaphor and into into wild wise seeing and and that's that's the fun of them i think and and that's the power of them too when choosing an oracle deck i think you should just always go with the one that looks most interesting to you i think you're being asked to trust your soul you know that it's going to call you towards that which is most illuminating and most interesting and most inspiring for you if you pick up a deck of cards because i tell you to pick it up and and not because it's one that you find genuinely interesting you won't stick with it for very long i can't imagine you'll be all that interested in it okay so last section which i have labeled miscellaneous how young in age are you amy by christina hayes i will be 42 tomorrow which i have determined is the meaning of life birthday so apparently after tomorrow all will become clear [Laughter] nancy fraser's wondering what my favorite christmas tradition is i love to watch the harry potter movies and the fantastic beast movies in in the in the lead up to christmas and then in the week between christmas and new year i love to watch the hobbit movies and then in the new year the first week of the new year i watch the lord of the rings movies and i do that every year and that is a ritual for me carol donnelly says i'm going through a very sudden bereavement i wonder if you could recommend a book that i could read that would perhaps offer some comfort or help to get through this very difficult time i just wanted to say i'm so sorry to hear this carol and i think that grief is one of those big emotions that quite often defies them speaking we can't tend to find the words to say the unseeable and i think when we're in that territory that the map becomes metaphor and the map becomes poetry and so i'm wondering rather than a book like a how-to guide or something like that or a memoir even that perhaps the the book that i could recommend to you would be poetry and mary oliver's book first is a collection of poems that she wrote after she had lost her partner and so i'm wondering whether that would be that would be a book to to look at but really if you're looking for an any poetry that to support you in this particular moment there's quite a lot of really good collections really good um anthologies and uh and i think just diving into as much poetry as you possibly can that feels good and feels supportive and lovely to you right now and might might be a really a really strong sense of um nourishment and fortitude and release and relief and ease so just wanting you to know that i'm thinking of you and that if you're experiencing if anybody's experiencing any grief right now that i'm sending you so much love and that i'm holding you in my heart and yeah wishing you some good pawns good poetry to help guide you through okay nick cohen asks have you ever worked as a voice artist reading literature for the audiobooks no i haven't however i have read some of my own writing and made it available as audio and a variety of different offerings i've had out in the past and i have read a lot of children a lot of stories and i've also done a lot of reading out loud in my um in my lectures and in my tutorials and things i think a lot of literature asks to be read out loud i think it takes on a different quality when it's hard and so so yes so thank you for the lovely compliment and no i had not technically read literature for audiobooks and last of all louisa munoz asked could i share a wish for next year well i think my wish would be for resilience and togetherness i think we're we're stronger when we're together i think we're stronger when we have you know beautiful strong places of connection and when we're integrated uh when we are well nourished well-fed well-met so i would wish for all of that for all of us and that you feel well-met by your circumstances by the people that are surrounding you and that you are staying healthy and well and yes that i'm wishing as all resilience to see through any points of difficulty challenge and obstacle so that we can meet them well and feel ourselves fortified and strengthened toughened and tenderized um through the process and come out the other side strong okay my darlings well that was gosh a long podcast with lots of questions answered i hope that i've done justice to your cues with my a's and yes next time will be a much more straightforward podcast and we'll be looking over all my knitting things that i've been finishing off i've finished a couple of things that i'll be sharing with you i've cast some new things on that might be cast off by the time we speak so i'll have lots of knitting to share with you next time so i hope that you join me then and yes remember the three winners that i read out at the beginning please do get in touch with me and let's organize the sending out of your of your prizes okay my darlings for my birthday this year i'm wishing you all a wonderful weekend a wonderful next couple of weeks and i will see you again soon

Channel: Amy Palko

Views: 11,213

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Id: U661DnTJU6I

Length: 114min 12sec (6852 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 07 2020