Where do I need to redefine myself?

Gros Bon Ange (The Sun)

I was perplexed when I saw this card. OMG a happy card! Tarot, do you have a fever? I love the reinterpretation of this card as the Gros Bon Ange (Great Good Angel). This card is unconditional love. The Sun shines on everyone, good and bad, all day, every day.

In the contemplation for this card, Louis Martinié writes, “Love is the road that Will walks, guided by The Star.”

There is a triad here: Gros Bon Ange (Love, The Sun), Ti Bon Ange (Will, Art, Temperance), and Z’Étoile (Destiny, A clear road, The Star). So I pulled them out.

When I read Tarot, I don’t go by the traditional meanings. Sometimes I do, sometimes I use astrological or numerological interpretations. When I’m doing work like this, though, I need juicy colour and great imagery. I closed my eyes and brought the cards up on the view screen in my mind’s eye. I stayed like that for a while, meditating and contemplating what this meant in relation to the question, but not really getting anywhere. At some point in the back of my head, my thoughts registered a thumping noise. Something falling. Cats. Return to the view screen.

When I came back to earth, I expected to see the tetra box of almond milk on the kitchen floor behind me. When I got up from the chair, this was on the floor:

Open to this page:

And she was sitting there, like the Underworld Gatekeeper that she is, tail wrapped primly around her feet, staring at me:

Do not look upon me, peasant.

(This is a photo from last week. When I started moving around and taking pictures of all this, she shot me a look and got the hell out)

When I read what Gail had to say about The Sun, this makes sense. I’ve been having a conversation in my head about my crochet sites. When I design patterns, I attract people almost effortlessly. I’m good at it. People like my work. I’ve been thinking about downsizing but keeping one blog separate for crochet patterns/tutorials and this one as a personal blog. I’d combine them but as I’ve said before, the hookers don’t seem to like it when I post about Tarot.

(I debated sharing the rest of this because it’s personal and I’m not good at that, but it was all part of my thought stream when I did this reading and wrote it up, so here goes....)

The problem is that I’m left handed. Or, rather, a portion of the right handed crocheting majority has a problem with it. I can’t tell you how many mean and nasty emails I’ve gotten over the years, because my photos are left handed. I’ve even flipped them in a photo editor but that’s still not good enough.

Once, once I made a video and put it in a free tutorial. I got a comment that was never approved: “I was so excited to watch this video...but you’re left handed. How am I supposed to learn anything from this? I wasted all my time trying to mentally flip this in my head. You really need to warn people that you’re left handed.”

Wha.....?

I still get angry when I think about this. There’s a tiny child inside me that sits with me and reads all this nasty horseshit, and her takeaway is “They hate me because I exist. They don’t want me to exist.” Now I know that’s not the case. It’s not a plot against me. It’s a lot of individual crafters being frustrated in the moment and most not realizing their written voice sounds so harsh. Some of them knew it, though. I’ll never forget one at Ravelry years ago when I was new there. She went out of her way to make it seem like me being left handed was the worst thing ever. My heart sank as I watched people read things I couldn’t delete and then change their minds about buying my patterns or going to my blog. I still *feel* that like it happened this morning.

I’ve received several messages over the years - and they still come. I haven’t put out new patterns since I lived in Winnipeg over five years ago and they’re still finding me, still commenting, still hating on my left handedness, and I’m still deleting and unapproving.

What I want to say to each and every one of them is, “If me and people like me can flip everything around in their heads all day, every day, and learn new things then FUCK YOU FUCK ALL OF YOU, you can do it too. There is not a good goddamned thing wrong with me and how dare you expectant lazy-minded bitches jump on me because I’m not your stupid default.”

But I do not say those things because 1. Dogpiling and 2. It’s hard to make money if you’re screeching like a crazy woman at all your customers.

Breathe. Recentre. The nice people reading this blog are not the people who jump on you for being left handed.

So I look back at those cards and Gail’s writing. I close my eyes and open them, to see what words jump out at me.

“People: Who are able to re-energize or revitalize people, projects, or things.”

“Renewing the energy in the situation; revitalizing others; repeating past actions in a slightly altered way.”

I have been going over this in my head for months. I have patterns that have gotten thousands of likes and the analytics on IG are off the scale. So many people reached. This is a very stark comparison to my Tarot IG that might reach 40 people. So many people have messaged me, offering to be testers, asking if these patterns will be for sale - FOR SALE! - my how times have changed. When I first started doing this people were almost offended that they had to pay for something, now they’re telling me, “TAKE MY MONEY”. It doesn’t hurt that Tunisian Crochet is having a huge moment in the crafting world.

I have looked into Patreon, Udemy, and Skillshare now that I have the tripods to film with.

But, left handed. People tell me to put it on TikTok and what I want to say is, “You mean the TikTok where people get torn to shreds? Is there a nice TikTok that I missed?”

I spend a lot of time wondering if people would buy a course taught by someone who is left handed. I spend a lot of time wondering if right handed people will avoid it even though they can use it. I also spend a lot of time wondering if there are enough left handed crocheters out there, that this would be worth it. I wonder how to deal with online bullies and garden variety nasty bitches because I’ve never been good at that. I’m ok with in-person bitches but getting ganged up online is not something I know how to deal with. If some offered a class on that, I’d sign up in a heartbeat.

I’m going to put this down for now and go do some housework. It’s a warm, sunny day. I wrote an email about some technical things pertaining to *all of this* to Scott, the Nerd King at MomWebs. I am a jumble of tangled energy right now. I might just walk down to the Aldi and get a few things.

UPDATE: Scott IS the Nerd King. He can’t can’t help me with my clawing pathological fear of being screamed at for being left handed but he can do some of the technical things that make me suck in my breath when I think about them.