To Be Continued…  picking up the threads of local textile conversations from travel in the UK

This slightly eclectic conversation series is Sharon Kallis’ way of bringing home the stories from some of the  people met along the way  on her summer research trip.

The name of this series is inspired by how sheep farmer Susan Russell ends conversations,” to be continued”, acknowledging there is always more to say, more to do, more to share.

 As many groups and individuals work at building back local textile systems, or learning what it takes to truly clothe ourselves through respectful  relationships to place, people, plants and animals, there is always more to learn- more threads to be gathered up and woven together.

 This series hopes to amplify the voices of some of these folks doing work in the UK and inspire others for what might be possible in their own community.

Keep an eye on this post for updates as new conversations are scheduled, or watch our events page for new listings!

October 27th 10-11.30 am (PST) 5-6.30pm(GMT)

Claire O’Sullivan from the Contemporary Hempery, Wakelyns farm, England

Claire will share her research into the rich history of hemp farming in East Anglia as well as share current successes, challenges and the next steps for invigorating the hemp industry. Learn how Claire and her partner Kitty Wilson Brown are honouring agricultural and textile traditions while looking ahead towards contemporary, small-scale, artisanal projects.

Part presentation, part conversation, those interested are encouraged to join for the zoom talk. A recording will be made available of the presentation, the conversation will not be recorded.

Get your free ticket to the event online here- tickets close the 25th, link will be emailed the 26th

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November 10th 10-11.30 (PST) – 6-7.30(GMT)

with Allan Brown- unpicking  the  labour of growing a garment from soil to closet

Over the studio days spent together,  Allan and Sharon had several conversations that touched on notions of speculative future textile economies. 

This conversation aims to pick up those threads:

Where do they each see moments for ‘curated inefficiencies’ vs efficiency through mechanization, in the many steps to growing a garment? 

With these ideas in mind, what kinds of local grow-to-wear community ecosystems can we collectively dream up? 

With luck, this conversation leads to some questions being generated that EartHand can  return to as this series continues. The presentation will be recorded and shared at a later time on EartHand’s YouTube channel, but join us and be a part of the conversation!

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December 1st 10-11.30AM (PST) 6-7.30PM (GMT)

Zoe Gilbertson, CEO and co-founder of Liflad

Zoe was recently awarded a Churchill Fellowship to explore building resilience through bioregional material production centred on nature and community. Exploring Europe by train and North America online to look for knowledge, small scale machinery and cooperative models to support the growing, processing and production of bast fibres such as flax and hemp. Zoe has also founded the UK Bast Fibre Network and the Bast Fibre Commons to aid in collective learning; connecting groups and individuals pursuing localized small scale bast fibre production.

Join us for this presentation and conversation where Zoe will share highlights and reflections from her research and we consider what feels transferable to a Canadian scale of geography from some of the European models studied.  The presentation will be recorded and shared at a later time on EartHand’s YouTube channel, but join us and be a part of the conversation! Read Zoe’s Bioregional Resillience through Bast Fibres Report here.

Keep an eye on this post for updates as this series continues to unfold…To Be Continued!

The learning gardens under our care have been hopping with activity; and at Trillium the new St Paul’s hospital continues to rise – look for the changes in the background of Trillium photos facing West!

Our Land & Body Tea-Care program included so many beautiful shared learnings from Jess Vaira and we hope we can have her with us again next year. Just a sampling of the flowers we spent time with in the garden include nootka rose petals, lavender, yarrow, plantain, mint, lavender, lemon balm and fireweed. We quickly realized the allotted 2 hours for this program was not nearly enough, and all agreed to stay an extra hour every week to let the sessions unfold as they needed. We also realized that there is so much to learn and share beyond the time constraints of this seasonal program- so expect us to be revisiting this type of program at different times of year too.

The Soil to Skin: Relational Clothing Cohort is meeting monthly with Sharon Kallis and collectively processing 4 fleeces, while sharing the labour (and some of the spinning), for local flax to become spun linen. The cohort is also active in tending plants during stewardship sessions that give us dye for our fibres. We have had a few side adventures into community, including helping the Sparrow family with salmon canning for the smoke house, helping at a mending night with Still Moon Arts Society, and participants will be present to help at future community events. It has been an incredible experience to witness the skills and strengths of the group come together, collectively making all the decisions for our collective- yet individual – colour range. There is an undercurrent of deep work happening here in practicing group decision making that will most certainly be brought forward into the Collective Land Care decision methodologies!

The Indigo Sessions with Anna Heywood-Jones cohort has been busy at work getting many plants started, doing the early-season work of pinching off plants to increase bushiness, trialing pigment extraction with the leaves removed and rooting new plants from the cuttings. The channel for this group on the communication system EartHand uses has been busy as folx test out pigment extractions, sample test fermenting leaves and more!

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Botanical Printing, Dying & Stitchwork: From Salvage to Future Heirloom

As we follow the seasonal palette of color offerings in the gardens led by CZarina Lobo, our colors so far celebrate the variations of chartreuse, cool greens, warm yellows, khaki, and many variations with plants such as weld, marigold, willow, and yarrow. In our prints, mordanting and print options have been explored, including Tataki-zomé and the potential found in lady’s mantle for beautiful prints on iron-dipped cloth due to its high tannin content. Autumn and winter will find dyepots shifting into oranges, reds, and purple tones before we head into our separate studios to continue our making/stitching time together online.

Our summer drop in open studios began the process of dying post consumer linen strips with plants from the gardens, and we are very excited at the test strips being woven by Corrina Hammond in her local studio as we to making mats as community gifts for a future project!

EartHand has a weekly rhythm for tending the gardens on regular summer evenings, and many of these sessions become social gatherings and informal skill share and networking opportunities too.

If you are interested in being a volunteer steward in our gardens or being in one of our long durational programs such as those described above, watch for volunteer orientation opportunities or longer durational program announcements early in the new year!

While the gardens and outdoor learning spaces have been active this year, ‘underground’, we are investigating how our collective roots might grow.

Last January, our group of researchers began the 9 week online program, How to Start a Coop with Young Agrarians. There was so much amazing information and learned knowledge presented to us! When garden work subsides we will be circling back to the resources we have now on file while meanwhile information gathering is still ongoing.

The Collective Land-Care research cohort (CLC) coalesced the learnings, sharing it with our board of directors, (it helps that 4 of the researchers joined the board) -and collectively the board and CLC cohort has begun drawing up a seasonal wheel to better understand the interconnected work rhythms of EartHand.

Sharon has also tracked hours for work in different divisions of labour from website work, program development, gardens, community and more – in general we are establishing a solid profile of what is required to cover the EartHand invisible care work that keeps us gathering.

Our next step is an online survey will help us assess the needs, desire and capacity of our community of skill holders- How can EartHand best support them going forward to both continue learning and growing while skill/knowledge sharing and be paid an appropriate amount?

As we navigate what it means to be the current witnesses and stewards of this Coast Salish stolen land, we are continually learning and evolving how we be good allies for Indigenous skill holders and skill seekers. This learning and self reflection time includes listening-work towards better understanding how the EartHand community as a whole and through specific actions of reciprocity can grow as allies.

Future steps in the months ahead will include an online poll to our wider community of skill seekers to better gauge interests in types of learning programs and various styles of collectivism we might envision.

Keep your eye out for ‘open house’ conversation jams both in person and online in early 2025 as we share what we are hearing from folx!

Meanwhile: Here are some of the resources shared in our workshop time with Young Agrarians we think are worth knowing about.

~ Have you heard of Holocracy? We thought it was a pretty cool business model for collective action and individual autonomy

~ Alternative collective accounting software- Open Collective

~ Choosing a business model questionnaire– what type of coop is good for your project?

and finally, this short video on the Vancouver island Cow-op was both sweet and inspiring!

Drawing out how various petals of the EartHand flower all connect back to the learning gardens!

As we enter sowing time for flax here on the West Coast, it seems a good moment to announce EartHand is a member of the North American Linen Association! This newly formed non-profit is a cross-border alliance that is helping connect us all for sharing resources, knowledge and support towards re-building a linen and related flax materials industry on this continent.

So far, we have greatly enjoyed the monthly membership meetings online; meeting ‘the movers and shakers’ on this continent, as well as meeting folks last month from Fibreshed Scotland working on their own seedbank project.

The importance of building our own systems has never been more clear then the fact that no seed will be leaving Europe this year due to the poor growing season last year.

We are so lucky to have Carol Hyland at Alderley Grange Farm in Saanich who is now selling linore seed she is growing in Canada sourced from the Fibrevolution project! When we first started growing flax in 2011, our seeds came all the way from Holland and were ordered from Pennsylvania, and one year they arrived 4 weeks after the best planting window. This year that would not even be an option but luckily, we ordered our seeds from Carol and Canada Post delivered them 2 days later.

So, a shout out of gratitude for the great work being done by Fibrevolution and all the folks that are connected now through NALA.

Are you interested in growing flax -even a little ‘curiosity plot’? Now is the time to plant.

Generally, look for soil about 8 degrees C, air temperatures in the 8 to 15 degree C range, nights not dipping below 3 degrees C, and some moist days in the forecast.

If you are looking for a book to help explain all the steps, you can’t do much better then this little gem, Homegrown Linen: transforming flax seed into fibre written by Raven Ranson, another artist on the West Coast of Canada.

AND, if you are wanting to learn about the processing, keep your eye out for EartHand events over the summer celebrating flax- our first coming up is scheduled for April 20th– a public processing day to break the flax straw grown with Kwantlen Polytech University at the Richmond farm last year- we have 8 different varieties to process and investigate how last years strangely dry and hot month of May impacted the different seeds.

A full offering of programs is now open for registration!

We are very excited to have a wide range of learning and garden connection opportunities- some starting up very soon!

Spaces are limited, register early to avoid disappointment. And note we are using a registration request form now for longer term programs- this allows you to custom choose the amount you pay as well as customizing splitting payments to keep our programs as accessible as possible. All of our programs have varying degrees of stepping into community and land care with us- this continues to be an important part of how we learn together- through reciprocity with the land and each other.

Urban Woodland Care & Carvers Guild

5 Saturdays , half days March 9 & 16, April 13, May 25, & Oct 19 plus garden time sliding scale from $400-$450

with David Gowman. This is an excellent opportunity to learn about sustaining a small woodland for crafting purposes. Individuals get the rare ( in the city) experience of picking out branches and sticks for personal projects from trees, learn about harvesting from living trees sustainably and step into the seasonal  cycle of the garden and related stewardship for woodcraft. Learn more and fill out the registration request form here

Relational Clothing: Growing a Soil to Skin Garment

11 Saturdays 10am-4.30pm Trillium Park 

April 6. May 4, June 1, July 6 & 20, Aug 3, Sept 7,Oct 5, Nov 9  2024 and  Feb 1, Mar 2 2025

and Online 10am-12noon Dec 7, Jan 11 2025 – virtual check in  and work session

sliding scale from $500-$725

with Sharon Kallis. This is a special opportunity to be a part of a small cohort of fibre folk for extended, collective learning and making towards personal garments made from the land.

Over 12 months we will share  in the local fibre bounty and encourage each other in our processing and making. ONE SPOT REMAINING! Learn more and fill out the registration request for here.

Botanical Printing, Dyeing & Stitchwork: From Salvage to Future Heirloom

6 Sundays in person   11am- 4pm Trillium Park April 7, May 5 , July 7 & 21, Sept 8, Oct 6

4 Sundays Online 10am-11.30  Oct 20, Nov 17, Dec 8, Jan 12  sliding scale from $420-$520

with CZarina Lobo. We are very excited to have beautiful, good quality, post-consumer linen bedding in a range of white and soft colours to offer for this program!

Starting from  linen squares and rectangles, this small  cohort over many months will mordant, print, dye and stitch personal textile projects that we think  just might be worthy of becoming family heirlooms… Learn more and fill out the registration request here.

Land & Body: TeaCare Cohort

4 Sundays 10am-12noon May 5 & 19, June 9, July 14 Sliding scale from $55 to $85

with Rebecca Wang. A chance to step into the gardens and ‘steep in learning’: tending and  harvesting from the plants that make for excellent cups of herbal  tea that grow in both of EartHand’s learning gardens.

Growing our own food in the city can be both a big challenge as well as a big commitment for time. Growing, tending and harvesting plants for personal herbal tea however, can be a simpler way to step into thinking about relational and  local ways to fuel our bodies. Learn more and register here.

Indigo Sessions with Anna Heywood-Jones

4 Saturdays 12 noon-4pm May 11, July 13, July 27, September 14  Sliding scale, $220-$280

Sharing learnings from last year’s Blue Nettle program, Anna Heywood-Jones will guide us through the process of growing and working with Persicaria tinctoria (an indigo bearing plant known by many names, including Japanese indigo). Diving into the plant’s life cycle and many magical properties, Indigo Sessions will offer participants the opportunity to collaboratively learn from these special plants.  Learn more and fill out the registration request here.

And of course, we have a few studio related programs as well as stewardship sessions still in the works, so keep an eye on the events listing here for fresh programs that sneak in after this post has been published.