The Golden Current 5: Kelda

Kelda

Once upon a particle and a wave, Kelda, a robust and curly faced elder made that coat. The inspiration came in the autumn, a firework shot into her consciousness and scattered its gunpowder in her body. 

Riveted by the momentum of creation, she ground some coffee beans and made a hot pot in her red cast iron, as that was brewing, her mind percolated with the seamless logic of patterning.

The bay tree growing in moist black earth beneath the kitchen windowsill fluttered its stiff, deep green leaves, powered by the invisible force of the breeze and the evident force that powered that wind.

Kelda smiled at Bay. Bay, humble Bay, with its crickety bush of leaves and slender trunk; Laurus Nobilis. Kelda sat down to cut the pattern which had made itself obvious on the fertile landscape of her mind, self sufficient, once it was born it figured itself out, this coat already had impeccable self esteem. Kelda made things out of what she had to hand, in this case it was an old table cloth woven tightly with thick, soft lengths of cotton. This fabric was the perfect size to cut out the base pieces of a calf length, hooded coat. She folded the straggly bits of leftover tablecloth and put them in the coffee pot with the soaked grounds. That evening she decided to bury the saturated strips of cotton in Bay's roots.

That was the darkest day. 

The first day of winter came the next morning, the light ascending. Kelda sat down to begin stitching the pieces together. She felt very cross at the projection. It would take much labor and patience to stitch these pieces together by hand, and that would just be the start. She would have to quilt it to make an outer and sheer Pocket Mouse and spin his wool and then weave it into the cotton to line it. That might take her a year.

Bay tapped on the window and said ‘Who is this coat for?’ 

‘It isn’t for anyone Bay.’

‘Where is the pressure coming from?’

‘The same place as the wind.’

‘The same place the passion to make it came from?’

‘Exactly the same place.’

‘Do I come from there Kelda?’

‘Yes.’

‘No need to make the coat Kelda.’

‘All of a sudden I don’t know why I do anything, I need to stop but I don’t know how’

‘Kelda you must go and cover your woad with their wool cloches so they don’t perish in the frosts, they are heading over and will be here this evening.’

Kelda collected the cloches and the fleece from the dry store and covered the woad. The day was dark like a pale dusk, the bright fleece domes stood out against the steely greens of the clouded garden, Kelda noticed her hands too were an astonishing white, strong, old and smooth against the greens that were secluding themselves spiritually from sight, merging with gathering shadows. The promised frosts could be felt by their forebears, twinkles of cold running ahead on a young breeze. Their innocence bit like puppy teeth, understandable but irritating. Kelda hurried inside, the winds were cold, she gathered a blanket and laid it over Bays roots.

Bay leaned into the harsh day, and gently whispered  ‘You do things from love or not at all Kelda. If you don’t feel your  love, don’t do anything else until you find it.’ Kelda caressed one of Bay's twigs and leaves and softened. She went inside and lit the stove top, it was only midday but dusk had come early,  Kelda liked to work in the evening. She sat down with steeped red bush and some thyme and honey bread and began stitching. 

She forgot these thoughts of the future, of course life is done one stitch at a time, she worked till about 8pm true time by the light of three beeswax candles. Kelda lives in a mountainous region named Thawcret, she lives on the top of a mountain named Caylon, it featheres up from the base forests of Natures seamless night, up towards the stars, pinprick bright. Among them was Kelda at her table, a child in the stable. A child stable, not looking for love, within love that found itself alive through time and matter, and the door was open to the child stable, and the heart was open at Keldas table and it found its way through her fingertips, concentrated so tenderly and passionately and absolutely into the pin prick or her needle, right now, and it stitched that coat into one piece. 

The stitching of the base took her most of the winter, the morning after she had finished she went to the woods below the house to gather herbs and firewood and was surprised by snowdrops everywhere ‘Faries’ she said chuckling, ‘Like newborn mice’. She strolled in the cool air up to the home, the aliveness of chilled lichens on tumbling stones swept the aura of her feet.

Kelda looked down into The Valley of the Serpent, where the river that springs from her garden runs through and into a dark woodland behind the valley's pleasant meadow.  It is named The Valley of the Serpent because the river is said to shed its skin before it enters the wood where it winds like a snake. 

It was springtime when Kelda entered her store room to fetch some preserved cherries for an almond sponge. She noticed a stockpile of more than a hundred jars of red cabbage sauerkraut. That was too many and it would do just fine to dye the coat.

The next day Kelda sheared her sheep, whose name was Pocket Mouse. People asked Kelda often why she named her sheep Pocket Mouse and she said it was phonetically correct for the creature and likewise Mount Caylon giggled at the syllabic pattern and the curious tones it provoked when said, especially if Kelda was being stern. Kelda being stern had nothing to do with being angry, it was a mere owlish force.

Pocket Mouse was happy to be sheared because it was warm now up there on Mount Caylon. After she had washed Pocket Mouse’s shorn curls, she let them dry out on a weather-splintered sowing table in the yard. The wood top had swelled with water and dried out so many times that it had bulged then cracked and creased, but like Kelda it had an iron body and served purposefully. 

Once the wool was bone dry, Kelda carded it by hand, brushing its fluffy mess until it was gathered straight and ready to be spun. Then, Kelda sat at her wheel and spun the loving, creamy wool. She twizzled it between her fingers into the tightest ringlets and the wool cooperated, wrapping itself neatly on the inside tubing of an old kitchen roll; fortified on the inside with balls of hay.

Rune and Richard would have liked to sleep in that roll, made by Kelda for spinning Pocket Mouse’s wool around it. 

Now that wool was yarn, Kelda continued transforming materials. She wove the yarn into the lining of the coat. Kelda made sure that she left about 5 mm height of yarn in every stitch and locked it in, to create a comforting bounce to the surface. It is an oversized coat with a generous hood and generous bell sleeves and generous everything. Kelda drank from Mount Caylons spring every day. Kelda knew very well how to bend time.

It was midsummer when the time came to dye, quilt and stitch the outer. Conveniently she had a bright white quilted sheet which she would simply wrap around the lined base and stitch into place following the lines of the established quilting, stuffing the pockets with feathers she’d collected from her chickens over time.

One deeply radiant day, she took all of the sauerkraut out the store and ran it through a siv into a tub in the yard. Kelda had a garden and a yard, the yard part had a brick floor and a chiminea, a tub and the iron bodied table: it was where she did all her outside messy work. The tub, now full of a magnificent deep purple liquid, became warm quickly in the summer heat. Kelda glowed with the seeing of the rare broth. She cheerily discarded the cabbage into a pile on the brick. She wasn’t certain what to do with the salted sauerkraut at present but it might make a good science pile for observation. She plopped the sheet in the broth and left it steep in the sunshine.

Now it was time to harvest her woad. They had made it into their second year flowering and had produced indigo rosettes. Kelda jingled over to Bay and removed the strips of cotton she had hidden beneath his soil, crumbly still with old coffee, they were wet but not rotten, she gathered them to her nose and smelled them, deeply grateful to for Bay’s presence, she kissed the strips with her heart. Saluting bay simultaneously with this kiss, she then moved passionately over to the patch of woad. Kelda had no designs on the strips of cotton, neither now or then, when she was right she lived in the wilderness of intuition. 

She gathered the rosettes and set them on the stove top to simmer. Kelda is a vegetarian. Not for any other reason than she couldn’t kill her animals. She ate a meal of cooked carrots, peppery leaves and scrambled eggs, bread with butter from down the valley; Kelda didn’t keep cows, just chickens and a few sheep. Wild goats climbed the mountain and they were as familiar to her as the sheep but she didn’t keep them, they kept themselves. After the woad had simmered, she ran it though a siv, plopped the remains on top of the kraut and dipped the coat in the indigo up to its waist. Nicely dip dyed, she hung it then over a wooden rack by her boiler where it sat until mid September getting dry and crusty as the vegetable pigments and salt solidified in the fibers.  

It was mid September and the garden was overwhelmed with seed heads and browning plants. Kelda was enjoying the treasures of late summer; garlic, sweetcorn and apples. Her body was encased in warm, golden skin. She fried flat breads made with a dough of orange, honey, turmeric and butter and ate the sweetcorns and garlics and apples altogether inside. Garlic went into honey in September and was taken every evening before bed to prepare the body for the coming seasons. It was also time to begin brewing hibiscus and echinacea and drinking that in the evenings.

She picked up the garment and got tremendous satisfaction from its form. The lining was so soft and so neat, the outer has been quilted so perfectly, bouncy yet not overwhelmingly puffy, the dye she knew when rinsed would be electrically coloured and soft to the touch, over time the color would fade comfortably and the seems would give and it would be different, it would be the most comfortable amd rare thing in the world, like a grandmother.

It was time to embroider the fabric, she picked out her needle and her threads. She chose prussian blue, salmon pink and gold. She sat and waited for the images to find her. She knew they would leap faithfully from her into perfect form