Of Deer, Spindle, Nettle & the Great Weaving of Life
There is an old remembering woven into this rattle, one that speaks of the unseen threads that bind life to death, darkness to light, and the human world to the more-than-human. A remembering that we are never separate from the great weaving of life, but are forever being spun, gathered, unravelled and woven again by the world around us.
The Thread Keeper was born from the coming together of deer, spindle and nettle, each carrying its own history, its own relationship with the land, and its own story long before it ever reached my hands.
At the heart of this rattle is the spindle tree, a rather unassuming inhabitant of our ancient hedgerows and woodland edges. For much of the year, it stands quietly among the other trees, almost unnoticed, until autumn arrives and the light begins to withdraw from the land when its leaves turn shades of crimson and rose, and its curious pink fruits split open to reveal brilliant orange seeds, like tiny lanterns suspended among the branches.
How beautiful this tree that waits until the world begins its descent into darkness before revealing its most astonishing colours, as though it knows something about the light that can only be discovered when the days grow shorter.
The spindle tree takes its name from the old practice of fashioning spinning spindles from its exceptionally hard, fine-grained wood. Long before the arrival of industrial spinning, human hands worked with this tree to transform loose fibres of wool, flax and nettle into thread, drawing something continuous from what was once scattered.
There is an alchemy in that simple turning, the transformation of plant and animal fibres into something that can bind, clothe, carry and protect. And woven through the history of spinning is a mythology far older than the tools themselves.
In Greek mythology, the Moirai, the three Fates, held the threads of human existence. Clotho spun the thread of life, Lachesis measured its length, and Atropos cut it when the time had come. In Norse mythology, the Norns were the mysterious women associated with the shaping of destiny, their stories carrying the understanding that what has been, what is becoming and what is yet to unfold are never entirely separate.
The thread became a way of understanding the mysteries of existence, the invisible relationships between birth and death, between our ancestors and those yet to come, between all that has been gathered and all that must eventually be released.
There is such magic in spinning when every thread required such intimacy with the living world. Before machines, there were hands gathering nettles, preparing flax, washing wool and twisting fibres. There were trees offering wood for spindles, animals offering fleece and skins, and countless hours spent turning the gifts of the land into the very fabric of human life.
The spindle was never simply a tool. It was a meeting place between human hands and the living world, an instrument through which something scattered could become whole.
And perhaps that is what The Thread Keeper speaks of. The gathering of the scattered parts of ourselves, the remembering of threads we thought we had lost, and the understanding that even when we cannot see the pattern, we are still part of the weaving.
The body of this rattle has been birthed from the hair-on hide of a wild fallow deer from the Welsh and Herefordshire borderlands. The deer has long wandered through the mythology and folklore of these islands as a creature of thresholds, moving between woodland and clearing, shadow and sunlight. In old stories, deer appear as guides into the Otherworld, drawing those who follow them beyond the familiar and into places where something waits to be discovered.
fallow deer, with their spotted coat reminds me of fragments of sunlight scattered across the darkness of the woodland floor, or perhaps stars appearing in the night sky, a being that carries light upon its skin.
The hide has been stitched entirely by hand using buckskin lacing that I made from deer hide, before being finished with a collar of naturally tanned, hair-on skin and , a braid of buckskin and nettle fibre binds the animal and plant worlds together around their neck.
The nettle fibres were gathered, prepared and spun by my hands last year, and there is something deeply satisfying about watching a material that once stood growing in the hedgerow become a thread capable of binding other beings together.
Nettle has a long relationship with human hands. Once worked into cordage, cloth and thread, this fierce and generous plant carries its own contradictions. It stings and nourishes, protects and provides. It asks us to pay attention to how we approach it, yet offers an extraordinary abundance to those willing to learn its ways.
In European folk traditions, nettle has associations with protection, endurance and transformation. In the old tale of The Wild Swans, a sister must gather nettles and weave them into shirts to free her brothers from enchantment. Her hands are wounded by the very plant through which their liberation becomes possible.
The story always reminds me that transformation does not always arrive through comfort, and that sometimes the very things that wound us become part of what sets us free.
Within the rattle are pieces of quartz and labradorite.
Quartz has long been associated in crystal traditions with clarity and amplification, while labradorite carries a more mysterious quality. When your first see it it can appear dark and unremarkable, yet when turned towards the light,stunning flashes of blue, green and gold emerge from within the stone. Its beauty is not immediately visible, It reveals itself through movement, through a change in perspective, through the meeting of darkness and light.
another reminder that the darkness is not always something we must escape but the very place where we begin to recognise the light that was there all along.
Finished with a brain tanned hair on hide wrap on the handle and some naturally shed pheasant feather for my land
The Thread Keeper is a rattle of remembering, of the unseen threads that hold us within the great weaving of life. A companion for those standing at thresholds, walking through uncertainty, or finding their way back to something they thought was lost.
Made by my hands, in relationship with the more-than-human world.
Price £145 - plus p&p Or kerbside collection from Ludlow
Of Deer, Spindle, Nettle & the Great Weaving of Life
There is an old remembering woven into this rattle, one that speaks of the unseen threads that bind life to death, darkness to light, and the human world to the more-than-human. A remembering that we are never separate from the great weaving of life, but are forever being spun, gathered, unravelled and woven again by the world around us.
The Thread Keeper was born from the coming together of deer, spindle and nettle, each carrying its own history, its own relationship with the land, and its own story long before it ever reached my hands.
At the heart of this rattle is the spindle tree, a rather unassuming inhabitant of our ancient hedgerows and woodland edges. For much of the year, it stands quietly among the other trees, almost unnoticed, until autumn arrives and the light begins to withdraw from the land when its leaves turn shades of crimson and rose, and its curious pink fruits split open to reveal brilliant orange seeds, like tiny lanterns suspended among the branches.
How beautiful this tree that waits until the world begins its descent into darkness before revealing its most astonishing colours, as though it knows something about the light that can only be discovered when the days grow shorter.
The spindle tree takes its name from the old practice of fashioning spinning spindles from its exceptionally hard, fine-grained wood. Long before the arrival of industrial spinning, human hands worked with this tree to transform loose fibres of wool, flax and nettle into thread, drawing something continuous from what was once scattered.
There is an alchemy in that simple turning, the transformation of plant and animal fibres into something that can bind, clothe, carry and protect. And woven through the history of spinning is a mythology far older than the tools themselves.
In Greek mythology, the Moirai, the three Fates, held the threads of human existence. Clotho spun the thread of life, Lachesis measured its length, and Atropos cut it when the time had come. In Norse mythology, the Norns were the mysterious women associated with the shaping of destiny, their stories carrying the understanding that what has been, what is becoming and what is yet to unfold are never entirely separate.
The thread became a way of understanding the mysteries of existence, the invisible relationships between birth and death, between our ancestors and those yet to come, between all that has been gathered and all that must eventually be released.
There is such magic in spinning when every thread required such intimacy with the living world. Before machines, there were hands gathering nettles, preparing flax, washing wool and twisting fibres. There were trees offering wood for spindles, animals offering fleece and skins, and countless hours spent turning the gifts of the land into the very fabric of human life.
The spindle was never simply a tool. It was a meeting place between human hands and the living world, an instrument through which something scattered could become whole.
And perhaps that is what The Thread Keeper speaks of. The gathering of the scattered parts of ourselves, the remembering of threads we thought we had lost, and the understanding that even when we cannot see the pattern, we are still part of the weaving.
The body of this rattle has been birthed from the hair-on hide of a wild fallow deer from the Welsh and Herefordshire borderlands. The deer has long wandered through the mythology and folklore of these islands as a creature of thresholds, moving between woodland and clearing, shadow and sunlight. In old stories, deer appear as guides into the Otherworld, drawing those who follow them beyond the familiar and into places where something waits to be discovered.
fallow deer, with their spotted coat reminds me of fragments of sunlight scattered across the darkness of the woodland floor, or perhaps stars appearing in the night sky, a being that carries light upon its skin.
The hide has been stitched entirely by hand using buckskin lacing that I made from deer hide, before being finished with a collar of naturally tanned, hair-on skin and , a braid of buckskin and nettle fibre binds the animal and plant worlds together around their neck.
The nettle fibres were gathered, prepared and spun by my hands last year, and there is something deeply satisfying about watching a material that once stood growing in the hedgerow become a thread capable of binding other beings together.
Nettle has a long relationship with human hands. Once worked into cordage, cloth and thread, this fierce and generous plant carries its own contradictions. It stings and nourishes, protects and provides. It asks us to pay attention to how we approach it, yet offers an extraordinary abundance to those willing to learn its ways.
In European folk traditions, nettle has associations with protection, endurance and transformation. In the old tale of The Wild Swans, a sister must gather nettles and weave them into shirts to free her brothers from enchantment. Her hands are wounded by the very plant through which their liberation becomes possible.
The story always reminds me that transformation does not always arrive through comfort, and that sometimes the very things that wound us become part of what sets us free.
Within the rattle are pieces of quartz and labradorite.
Quartz has long been associated in crystal traditions with clarity and amplification, while labradorite carries a more mysterious quality. When your first see it it can appear dark and unremarkable, yet when turned towards the light,stunning flashes of blue, green and gold emerge from within the stone. Its beauty is not immediately visible, It reveals itself through movement, through a change in perspective, through the meeting of darkness and light.
another reminder that the darkness is not always something we must escape but the very place where we begin to recognise the light that was there all along.
Finished with a brain tanned hair on hide wrap on the handle and some naturally shed pheasant feather for my land
The Thread Keeper is a rattle of remembering, of the unseen threads that hold us within the great weaving of life. A companion for those standing at thresholds, walking through uncertainty, or finding their way back to something they thought was lost.
Made by my hands, in relationship with the more-than-human world.
Price £145 - plus p&p Or kerbside collection from Ludlow
