our guest for episode 5 is melissa nelson! melissa is the owner of starlight knitting society. she's also a resting labor doula, mom of teens, and friend to all. you can find her online at starlightknittingsociety.com and on instagram @starlightknittingsociety.

each season we read a new book about witchcraft practices around the world with the #snortandcacklebookclub, with a book review by ash and the occasional guest helping us close out the season. this season's #snortandcacklebookclub read is babaylan sing back: philippine shamans and voice, gender, and place by grace nono.

take the fibre witch quiz at ashalberg.com/quiz. follow us on instagram @snortandcackle and be sure to subscribe via your favourite podcasting app so you don't miss an episode!

support future seasons of snort & cackle by joining the creative coven community.

transcript

snort & cackle - season 4, episode 5 - melissa nelson

ash alberg: [Upbeat music plays.] Hello, and welcome to the Snort and Cackle podcast where every day magic, work and ritual intersect. I'm your host, Ash Alberg, a queer fibre witch and hedge witch. Each season we read a new book about witchcraft practices around the world with the #SnortAndCackleBookClub with a book review by me and the occasional guest helping us close out the season. Our book this season is Babaylan Sing Back: Philippine Shamans and Voice, Gender and Place by Grace Nono.

Whether you're an aspiring boss witch looking to start your knitwear design business, a plant witch looking to play more with your local naturally dyed color palette or a knit witch wondering just what the hell is a natural yarn and how do you use it in your favorite patterns, we've got the solution for you.

Take the free fiber witch quiz at ashalberg.com/quiz and find out which self-paced online program will help you take your dreams into reality. Visit ashalberg.com/quiz [upbeat music fades out] and then join fellow fiber witches in the Creative Coven Community at ashalberg.com/creative-coven-community for 24/7 access to Ash’s favorite resources, monthly zoom knit nights, and more. [End of intro.]

I am here with Melissa Nelson, who is the owner of Starlight Knitting Society. She is also a resting labor doula, mom of teens and friend to all. Hi, Melissa. [Giggles.]

melissa nelson: Hello!

ash alberg: How's it going?

melissa nelson: It's so good.

ash alberg: Good. So I'm loving your pink hair that nobody on the podcast can see but it looks really nice. [Laughs.]

melissa nelson: Thank you.
ash alberg: So tell us a bit about who you are and what you do in the world.

melissa nelson: Oh my gosh. It's so funny. I woke up this morning thinking like, Ash is going to ask me who I am and what I do in the world. [Both laugh.] And people ask me that question a lot because of my position as a yarn store owner. And so people, I get, I ... they tend to think they know me or want to think they know me or think they want to know me.

But it's often the way that I define myself is I define myself as a facilitator. There's a lot of ... so basically I own a yarn store here in Portland. We're going on six and a half years now of this store being open and it's actually my second yarn store. So I had a store in 2003 to 2007, close that store, became a labor doula, did that for a good long time and then transitioned back into being a store owner. So working for myself has been basically my identity.

ash alberg: Yes.

melissa nelson: But yeah, so what I do in the world is I facilitate crafters and makers and give people a space and an opportunity to make and be and express themselves. But I don't tend to do a lot of it myself, if that makes sense. [Laughs.]

ash alberg: Yes, totally. I feel especially when you once a yarn store gets to a certain size and I feel like it also is one where you're anticipating it getting to that certain size relatively early on where specifically you're hiring staff. Like, there's so many facets to running a brick and mortar that like people think that running a yarn store is basically like having an entire building that is devoted to your own personal stash and that you just spend your day sitting on a couch knitting and like selling other people yarn. Like ... [Laughs.]

melissa nelson: I cannot tell you how many times someone has said to me, “Oh, that must be so cush. Like you just get to sit and knit all day and do nothing.” And I'm like, I probably knit the least of anyone that works for me.

ash alberg: Totally.
melissa nelson: And it has been that way since the beginning of my career in

this field. Like I ... so I went to art school.

ash alberg: Mmkay.

melissa nelson: And I thought I was gonna be a painter. And one of the things that happens when you go to art school and you think you're all that is that you get there and you realize that everybody there was like the best in their high

school or whatever. And I learned pretty quickly that I was not very good at painting and drawing, even though I went to a very good art school, I still to this day, I'm like, how did I get in there?

But luckily I had I have this lovely aunt who ... and she found out that my school had a very large fiber department and she said please, if you do nothing for me, the rest of your life, take one weaving class.

ash alberg: Cool.

melissa nelson: And I was like, all right, fine. I took one weaving class and I never looked back. Basically from that moment, I focused all my energy into fiber art and weaving and textiles. And luckily my school doesn't ... it didn't, you don't have to declare a major. So I could do that, I could just go wherever.

ash alberg: Amazing.

melissa nelson: And then ... that was in Chicago. And then I long story short to moved back to Chicago and got a job in a yarn store from one of my former instructors. I didn't know how to knit. I didn't know anything about it. And she said if you can learn to knit proficiently in six months, come work for me.

ash alberg: Okay.
melissa nelson: So I was like, I knew all the weaving stuff. I knew all the other

fiber art stuff. I didn't know knitting. And I was like, I can, I could do this. ash alberg: Yeah. [Chuckles.]

melissa nelson: And she handed me a book and a pattern and a pair of needles in some yarn and said, here you go, go learn. And I did, I sat down with my Vogue knitting book. I opened it up to page one and I just basically went through that entire book and became completely obsessed.

ash alberg: Oh my god.

melissa nelson: So I have always worked in the yarn industry from day one. Literally learned inside the industry. And so it's always been that for me. It's always, like I had this like creative side, went to art school, whatever. I didn't really know what to do with it. And then, okay, here you go. Here's this like little gift.

ash alberg: That's amazing. I feel ...
melissa nelson: I’ve been doing it ever since.

ash alberg: ... like art school is something that I think is underrated in terms of teaching you skills that are really useful just across life though. Like I'm thinking, especially critiques.

That is a world where, when I did my master's we, I did it in theater, but we did critiques and if nothing else, it taught me how to become really good at taking constructive criticism, but also being able to like filter out, okay, what is actually constructive criticism? What is somebody's opinion that is not actually rooted in criticism?

melissa nelson: Sure, yeah.

ash alberg: It’s just an opinion. And then what is somebody who's giving me constructive criticism in a way that is really hard for me to hear and how do I like separate out the way they're saying it to me and figuring out, are there actually any nuggets in there that are useful that I can apply?

melissa nelson: Critiques are like the first thing you learn. So it's like, you go into your basic classes and then they go, like it's this shock in a way, because especially when you come from a place like high school where there's two like really good artists in high school and everybody's like, like, wow, you're amazing.

And then you go, okay, everybody's good. So what about it? And then, yeah, it's you get slapped in the face with now we're all gonna look at it together. And you're like, what? We're all gonna look at it? OK.

And so yes, you learn to look at other people's work, you learn to be looked at and you learn to ... it, it's like a little bit of a roller coaster at first because it's coming. It's like you don't realize you're gonna have that kind of audience. Then you realize you're gonna have that kind of audience and then you go, oh what are they gonna say if I do this, what are they gonna say if I do that? And then you get over that.

ash alberg: Yes! Yes.

melissa nelson: And so it's, you learn about yourself through that critique process as well ‘cause it's I don't wanna hear things that are gonna make me

question myself or make me feel bad about myself or whatever. And then you realize oh no, it's not about that. It's not personal. It's about the work and it's about growing and changing and getting better.

ash alberg: Exactly.

melissa nelson: I used to say too, that I think you're absolutely right and I love that you raised that point that art school is like, everybody thinks, oh, you're learning how to make art. And in some art schools or design schools and things like that, yeah. You are.

In other schools, like the one I went to was very conceptually based. And so it didn't really matter how you made your work. So some classes were based in technique and teaching you how to actually use materials, but most of them were teaching you how to get the end result for what you were wanting to communicate.

What do you wanna communicate? How do you talk about it? So that, I like to tell people that art school really about learning how to see.

ash alberg: Yeess.
melissa nelson: So I, my kids both really love to draw and their dad, of course,

I met him in art school. So they're stuck.

ash alberg: [Laughs.] The whole family.

melissa nelson: They’re cute when I watch them.

ash alberg: The black sheep of the family would be like an athlete. You're like, what are you, how did you appear?

melissa nelson: I just assume they wouldn't care at all about it. And of course, he's like incredible at drawing and all of that. He actually is a really good painter. I am not. But we talk about it.

We talk about in the ride on the way home from school, okay, if you were going to draw or paint this white van that's in front of us, what colors would you use?

ash alberg: Yeaah.

melissa nelson: And understanding that you wouldn't put white anywhere on that piece of paper and just looking, just observing. And you take that, like looking and observing at like for drawing and you can expand that into everything in your life. Like oh, I'm observing this person walking down the street, it looks sketchy.

And maybe I just went across the street or I'm observing this person in front of me that I'm having this, very deep conversation with, but their body language is telling me something different than their words are telling me. And there's all this, anything that you can think of, comes from not just learning to look

ash alberg: Yes. And it's such a useful skill. I'm thinking specifically in both like brick and mortar and online, like running an online business as well, because of course, you've kept Starlight alive through a pandemic, having to close, having like live events that had to be canceled and all of that.

And the, I think one thing that is really not valued enough or compensated properly is the amount of emotional labor that folks in the service industry, which includes yarn stores, like in any retail, have to do. And sometimes it's, it can be really like fulfilling and other times it is completely draining and incredibly frustrating.

And like even when ... and I sometimes joke about this, but it's also not really a joke. I'm like, I've done a really specific job of growing an audience that is, they don't really give a shit about sales, but if Willow needs emergency vets, something which happened recently, then immediately people are like, here, I'm placing my order right now.

And I very rarely have to deal with like really entitled people cuz I make it really clear that I'm not interested. I don't need your money. You can fuck off, go buy from someone else.

melissa nelson: Right, yeah. Oh, bye.
ash alberg: There's always, every once in a while there will be like, two crappy

customers in a year. And I think about those two crappy customers ... melissa nelson: It's the worst.

ash alberg: and it's the same thing. You can have 95% of your clientele are wonderful humans, but that 5% that like draw an extra level, can it ... they just ...

melissa nelson: It's, It's a, it's a ... I've gotten better at it over time because, there's a couple of things there. One, that I had a shop before that, that failed. I had to close it.

ash alberg: Yeah.

melissa nelson: It was, they say like people in business that, you know, especially retail that, most people that are successful have two failures before they have a success.

And I read that very early on when I was getting ready to open my first door. I was 26 when I opened my first door so I was really young, super naïve.

ash alberg: Oh my god, that’s so young. Yeah.

melissa nelson: And had crazy success in the beginning. And then reality came in and I didn't really know what to do to be a good business person. And so if someone came in and said, I can't believe you don't have this yarn, or I'm out of this, I'm out of this, I would bend over backwards to please those people.

ash alberg: Yeah.

melissa nelson: I would do the craziest things to the detriment of my business and to my health, really, because I was worried about those 1, 2, 3 people that were upset and I wouldn't focus my energy on the 200 people that were thrilled. And so over time, not to say that doesn't still affect me, but over time, I've been able to let some of that negativity roll off and go, okay, like where does my energy really need to focus?

And if I have done my best and my employees have done their best and we have put the best, our best foot forward in every possible avenue and someone is still unhappy, that person's going to be unhappy no matter what we do. And they're gonna be unhappy no matter what shop they walk into.

And like you, I let that be them and their problem. Like it's so funny, we, I just got a review a couple days ago on Google, which I hate Google reviews because you can be anonymous.

ash alberg: Yeah.
melissa nelson: And anyone can write them and it just, whatever.

ash alberg: Yeah.

melissa nelson: It was a gentleman, he actually had a profile picture. The review came in at four o'clock in the morning and it was three stars, three outta five. And ...

ash alberg: That’s just a weird one to do. Usually people do either five stars or more often they'll do a one star, but ....

melissa nelson: This is what he said. He said, I would've put one star, but the staff was kind to my wife.

ash alberg: That was it? melissa nelson: Uh huh. ash alberg: What the?

melissa nelson: So of course, I'm always gonna shoot back. Hey, if we, if ... I think what I said was something like “Not sure how we didn't earn a better review if you were happy with our service.”

ash alberg: [Snorts.] Yep. [Laughs.]

melissa nelson: What else are we supposed to do? And also to not explain why you didn't like our store. And honestly, this is the kind of person where I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna worry about it. At this point, I'm just curious.

ash alberg: Yes.
melissa nelson: You took the time ... ash alberg: ... at 4:00 AM.

melissa nelson: Something we did affected you or something you saw affected you so much that you felt like you had to say something to the world, to someone.

ash alberg: Yes. Yeah, exactly. And also during the witching hour. I'm like

anytime anybody says anything between honestly, 10:00 PM and 5:00 AM. I'm like at 6:00 AM maybe you're like somebody who's an early riser.

melissa nelson: Getting your day started.

ash alberg: Having a cup of coffee, whatever, but like between ... I, I have a rule that I have put in place with multiple past relationships, but it also applies to other things. I'm like, if we start a serious conversation at 10:00 PM, we're not having this serious conversation until tomorrow morning after we've had breakfast. We need sleep and coffee.

melissa nelson: It never goes well.

ash alberg: Nooo! Like those are, there's a reason. Even if you're a night owl, I'm sorry, there is nothing that is useful ... like my I can tell my, when I start to be, I start making problems for myself and then I look at the time and I'm like, oh, it's 1:30 in the morning. I need to go to bed.

melissa nelson: This is not ... I call it diminishing returns, right? The more energy you put in the less you get back from it, or you're just like pushing and pushing it.

ash alberg: Yeah.
melissa nelson: Stop. Let it go.
ash alberg: Did he ever get back you?
melissa nelson: Yeah ... I am so, you know, like the review system ... ash alberg: I hate them.
melissa nelson: Was that, did you lose me?
ash alberg: No, I hate them.

melissa nelson: Oh, gotcha. Yeah. I it's, it's like, it can be the shot in the arm you need to like make your day, or it can ruin everything for you and the power that it puts in the hands of people who may have ulterior motives ...

ash alberg: Yes.

melissa nelson: ... to harm you. It's really unfortunate and it causes people so much unnecessary stress where they’re ... it feels like I'm always, I'm the kind of person that's, hey, we're not perfect. We make mistakes.

ash alberg: Absolutely.

melissa nelson: Come to me, let's work it out. Trust that everything else you've seen from us and everything you've heard from us and everything you've read about us is true. And that it was a mistake and that's not who we are. And I see that ... I dunno if you ever do this, but sometimes I'll go read restaurant reviews to just see what they have, what kind of atmosphere, whatever.

And they'll be like 10 five-star reviews and one one-star review. The one-star review, I always read them because I'm like, what is it? What is it? And it's always something that either wasn't in the restaurant’s control or some nitpicky thing that it's like, you couldn't let that go? You had to sit down and write a review? Oh my god.

ash alberg: And that you're negatively impacted.

I'm also just, even when there's like a bunch of one-star reviews, I become very ... if there's one-star reviews and there's not like photographic evidence of, I ordered a thing and it came like spoiled or broken and here's a photo of it actually being that. I'm like, because I've had so many friends over the years who run queer run businesses and they get trolled by like ultra right-wing folks, and I just, I am immediately suspicious of small business that has managed to sustain itself for a chunk of time and has a bunch of one-star reviews. I'm like, something's going on.

melissa nelson: Yeah.

ash alberg: And unfortunately it's extr--, like part of the reason why I don't have reviews enabled on my own website, ‘cause I could, is that, and there's certain parts of my website where I'm like, oh, it would actually be useful if I had people writing great reviews because I get lovely messages from people.

But I also am like, all you need is that one person who's gonna be an ass. I've had trolls on different platforms over the years for various reasons. I'm like, I just, I'm not interested in dealing with that. And if there's actually a problem, it's like you said, have a conversation with me, like trust that I do genuinely want to figure out a solution if there is one to be figured out.

Yeah. And that I'm not ghosting you or I'm not ... I don't care about how you feel, like I do genuinely want to figure out a fix if there is a fix to be figured out. But also if you're like a dysregulated human who's just nitpicky about everything in your life and you're gonna take it out on me in this particular moment, or I remember when I used to sell on Ravelry, I was devastated early on because I had this pattern that the ... ‘cause also there's not that many people that take the time out of their day to do reviews.

And so I remember having this one pattern that had an average two-star review and it was because somebody had put a one-star review and I went to look at it to see oh, what's wrong? And literally this person could not remember that ... like they wrote in the notes on their pattern or on their project page, “Can't remember what pattern I used, put it down for a while, using this yarn,” which was like a completely different gauge than what the pattern was written for, but they linked to mine.

And so I, I sent them a message and I was like, hi, like FYI can you please ... melissa nelson: Like you’re linking to the wrong pattern ...

ash alberg: Yeah, I was like, can you please unlink? This does affect patterns sales. And I like, I never heard, but that was the moment where I was like, this is stupid. And the fact that this is just like built into ... there are many reasons I've left Ravelry, but that being one of them where it's we're gonna do this, and it ...

melissa nelson: And there's no ...

ash alberg: ... like actively harms the sellers on the platform. But we're just gonna have it as a default. Like you don't even have the option of being like, let me take it on or off.

melissa nelson: Yeah, I think that's so interesting what you said. What I have discovered is that I'll have people try to call me out on various things on, various platforms. During our yarn crawl a couple weeks ago, someone was upset because I had a basket of a dyer’s yarn on the floor.

Now this happens from time to time when we run out of room, we put things in baskets and we put them wherever we can. And during yarn crawls, especially ...

ash alberg: Yeah, absolutely. It’s chaos.

melissa nelson: ... there's a lot of people and so you gotta get stuff. And just so we had this tucked in a corner. And they were mad about it because it was a BIPOC dyer and they thought I was treating this dyer poorly and that it was bad form and all of these things.

And I was like, okay, I can see that, that's affecting you. And I said cause I had a wall of, yarn hanging right next to it and they were like why didn't you put that dyer on the wall? The wall was literally like all one dyer. We just had a ton of inventory.

ash alberg: Right.
melissa nelson: Then the basket was like one yarn. ash alberg: Yep.

melissa nelson: So I sent this person pictures. This was an email, like five paragraphs long. They were so upset with me. So I sent this person pictures of that very wall with that yarn that was in the basket also on the wall and other BIPOC dyers on the wall. I'm like, it rotates.

ash alberg: Oh my god. Yes.
melissa nelson: It rotates. So I was like, of course I wanna feature these people.

Of course I wanna feature every dyer we end up having in the store. Like we get a lot of inventory. We put it on the wall, we feature it. No response.

ash alberg: See, this is the bit that like drives me nuts when it's like, you're so irate about something that you feel like you need to like vomit out this whole thing and then when the person is here, let's have a conversation about it. They're like, I'm not interested, I just needed to vomit out whatever I have to say and I don't actually wanna engage in a dialogue about anything.

melissa nelson: Yeah. It happens a lot. And that's when I started to be like, okay, if you, if this was legitimate, if this was something that ... ‘cause I'm always open to improving, I'm always open to being shown something maybe I didn't see, or maybe I was ignorant to. Show me, help me.

If you're willing to point something out to me, I'm willing to listen. Let's have a conversation. Hopefully I can grow from it. And this was one of those things where I was like, oh, I want you to know that I do keep care about this. And I do care about what you perceived to be dissing this particular dyer. That was definitely not intended and I want you to know that I care.

ash alberg: Yep.

melissa nelson: And to just have that person be like, like who knows what their response was. Maybe they sat down and read my response and were like, oh that's great and just kept it to themselves. Or maybe they're like, whatever. I don’t know!

ash alberg: But give some indication of whether you like need more in that moment. And I feel like it's different if somebody leaves like a one sentence thing on a like an Instagram thread, like that's a different thing, but if you're gonna write basically a novel in email form ...

melissa nelson: [Giggles.] Yes.

ash alberg: And then there is a point where okay, the conversation is over, there's a natural end. You don't need to be in perpetual communication with somebody, but when there's that much effort that is put in initially, giving something back is, I don't know.

It just ... and maybe it's a case of recognizing after that moment oh, I was triggered in a way. And so now I need to go and sit with my feels about the way that I like felt that out. But I dunno ...

melissa nelson: I think we're, I think we're living in a society right now where it's become increasingly difficult to be wrong.

ash alberg: Absolutely. Yeah.

melissa nelson: Like we've gotten so just divided in this way where it's like and I think anyone can be guilty of this where it's, I have to dig in and I'm, I gotta fight for what I think is right.

And it's very hard for us to say, oh, I really went to bat for this thing and I think I might have been wrong. Because I don't know, somehow we've gotten, as a society, in our brains that if we're wrong, that we're wrong about everything or

that there's, or there, or that we're bad or there’s something wrong with us as a person like ...

ash alberg: Yeah.
melissa nelson: It's really unfortunate. I don't really know how we can climb

out of that.

ash alberg: Yeah.

melissa nelson: That's basically how I've been running my business since day one, is to listen to people and take advice when I can and try really hard not to be defensive and go, okay, bringing this up for a reason, and what can I learn from this?

And I find that like my dad taught me, you get more flies with honey or whatever. And it's like, take the opportunity to engage and admit where you can grow and learn, and then everybody benefits.

ash alberg: Absolutely. Exactly. It's funny. I was just talking with my therapist about this whole like general thing. And she was like, even if you're like in conflict with somebody and it's 90%, their shit. There's still 10% that is yours and you don't need to take on their 90%, but acknowledging your 10% helps the both of you to move forward.

And I'm definitely like, I have not always done this particularly well or gracefully. And I'm sure that there are times in ... actually there are. Times in recent past in my personal life where I've definitely, I think that I'm holding onto a boundary that is necessary. And it is to some extent, but there's also there, there could be a little bit more flexibility there.

And the boundary that I am maintaining is to the detriment of the relationship. And there's the consequence of that and choosing to keep that boundary is fine, but it's also worth like interrogating for yourself, why do I feel so strongly that I need to hold this in place?

And is this somebody where I feel ... I think a lot of what it is that people feel unsafe emotionally and like in our bodies, our body doesn't differentiate between whether we're are being chased by a tiger or whether we're being called in for something. Our body is like, “Threat. I need to protect myself.”

And unfortunately, the way that lately society seems to be rolling is that we become extremely defensive. There's a lot ... like the shame spiral kicks in and it becomes hard for us to crawl our way out of that and be okay with the fact that we've made a mistake.

But I, that doesn't mean that it's not worth learning how to do that. Because also the only way that we learn and grow is by making mistakes and learning from those. And I think part of the problem is that it's acceptable as children. Like we, we are like, yeah, for sure. Kids. They're always, that's how they, that's how they're growing and developing.

But we forget as adults, we are also still learning and developing all the way through our lives. And there's, I feel like young children are really good at it. And elderly folks are really good at it. And there's this like chunk of decades in between where we're like, I'm supposed to know everything.

melissa nelson: Yeah.
ash alberg: We just like, don't.

melissa nelson: It was, that brings up something for me. It was really interesting. My stepfather, who has basically been my father my whole life, he has this group of gentlemen that he like chit chats with a couple times a week over coffee in the morning. And they're all political persuasions and they just love banter and whatever.

And they're in, they're all in their seventies. And when the Black Lives Matter protests and things were happening in 2020 and we are in Portland, so it was a big hub for that. And so they were having lots of conversations about it and definitely a really interesting generational view of it.

And he came to me and he said, “I wanna ask you one question.” I was like, okay, go ahead. And he goes, “Do you think you're prejudiced?” Prejudice, right, this word we used to use like in the 90s. And I go, yeah, of course I am. And he sat back and he went, “You are the only person that has admitted to that.”

And I was like ‘cause you're asking old guys, like ... ash alberg: Yeah.

melissa nelson: Of course they think they're like ... of course I'm not prejudiced. I've learned, I've grown. I dunno. But it was like, no, we're, as like coming to terms with the fact that we have these biases and what do we do with that? j

Not that we're all somehow perfect ust because we recognized it.

ash alberg: Exactly. It's this thing of recogniz-- like the problem is that like systemically, we have grown up with these things. They are just part of us, whether we want them to be or not. And doing the work is in actively recognizing them when they show up, because they're gonna show up, and then unlearning them and undoing them and counteracting them.

Like the work is not just in being like, ah, I read, a book I'm done. I understand the things. [Snorts.]

melissa nelson: Yeah. I had a wonderful woman talk to me during that time because as a privileged, youknow, blonde blue-eyed white woman, like a lot of these things hit me in those ways. That was like, ah, fuck. Like, thought I was pretty actualized, found out I wasn't at all.

And this lovely woman came and talked to me and she's, cause she offered, she's I, this is what I do for a living, and if you want me to talk to you ... and I was like, that's amazing. Of course I cried my white woman's tears and I needed to, that was my process, but that was my moment. It was in a little cocoon and she said, look, you wanna check boxes, like you just said. I read a book, I'm good. She's like, you wanna check boxes and I'm here to tell you, you can't.

There are infinite boxes to check. She's like, you'll never finish checking boxes and that's what you have to come to terms with.

ash alberg: Yes.
melissa nelson: And it was really painful ... ash alberg: Yep.

melissa nelson: ... at that moment because it, our desire for so many things, whether we're ending a relationship or whether we're figuring out if we're right about something or not, we want it to be clean and clear cut.

ash alberg: Yep.

melissa nelson: And she just opened my eyes to nope. It's just about the journey always. And once that settled in and I became okay with that, I became okay with that process for everything in my life, where it's, I'm not gonna be perfect. I'm not gonna get it all figured out. But as long as I keep examining it and keep looking at it and keep trying ...

ash alberg: Yeah.
melissa nelson: ... that's, that's the point.

ash alberg: Yes, totally. It's so interesting, ‘cause like at the heart of all of it, there are these like core values that never change. And, but then everything around the containers in which we are trying to achieve those values and protect those values, they're constantly changing and they're constantly in flux.

And I find it so interesting. I've experienced it for decades within the queer community of generational language gaps and the words that one group uses and then the next generation is like really not okay with, and then the generation after that is like, we're reclaiming. And just accepting the fact that there are going to be those differences and they are not necessarily ... there are times where language is something that we absolutely can be like, nope. All of you have lived during a time where we have acknowledged this is not the word.

melissa nelson: Yeah. [Laughs.]
ash alberg: Not, absolutely not. You do not get a pass on that. melissa nelson: No more excuses.
ash alberg: Yeah.
melissa nelson: I have ... yeah.

ash alberg: But then there’s other times where it's, especially queer community is a really obvious example where it, so much of it lives in honestly very privileged spaces in terms of the theory.

And you're dealing with ... the language changes frequently. I have learned to just give up because every six months the youth have ... and I'm not even that old, but I'm like the youth have figured out an entirely ...

melissa nelson: Did I tell you ...
ash alberg: ... new vocabulary. I don't know what it is. I will accept that is

what they are going with.

But I've also learned that to hold, especially within community, but also outside of community, there, there does need to be a bit of grace given when we're like, this is the language we're using right now. And it's okay, that's the language that you in your very specific social bubble in usually your urban environments led by certain groups of people then that is the language that you are using.

It is not necessarily the language that is being used in rural spaces or in different like cultural communities or a different country. Like, holding everybody to your specific idea of what is appropriate when you have not actually taken the time to see what is that person's reality? What is their collective experience?

And just been like you’re wrong. Have you actually looked to see ... you're assuming that they're wrong, but maybe what they are doing is even more ahead of what you are doing in terms of the actual work on the ground ...

melissa nelson: I have the advantage ...
ash alberg: ... just they’re using different language.

melissa nelson: Yeah. I have the advantage of having two teenagers. They keep me real up to date, almost too up to date. I'm like, what's happening? Like my son went to ... it's not the Gay Straight Alliance anymore. It's the Gender/Sexuality Alliance, which I'm like, cool. Okay, cool.

Except for my son's a freshman in high school and he goes, mom, I'm going to the GSA after school. I'm like, that's cool. And he's yeah, it's bring an ally day. And I'm like, okay, cool. And he goes, all my friends call it gay club. [Ash laugh-snorts.] I was like, okay, because they're, again, it’s that reclaiming, right, where they're just like, no, this is who we are.

So we just all call it gay club. Like, alright. But the teens, all of this stuff that we have struggled through and the previous generations have struggled through, they're just like, we got it.

ash alberg: This is ... yes! melissa nelson: We got all of it.

ash alberg: Yep. And it’s like, it’s really encouraging – [Both talking at the same time.]

melissa nelson: ... and we'll invent it if it's not, if it doesn't exist, because we accept everyone. And so, it's just ....

ash alberg: It's actually really encouraging. It's like, the youth are honestly the ones ... and I, I don't know if this has perpetually been the situation where each generation is like, oh, we have hope because of the children, but I'm like, I do legitimately have ...

melissa nelson: No, seriously.

ash alberg: Like I have hope because this group of kids is figuring their shit out and I’m just I'm crossing my fingers and toes that they continue to carry that forward.

melissa nelson: You have to get some generation’s credit, like my generation and some of the ones before and after where they're people who fought for marriage equality and rights to adopt and fertility rights and all of these different things that have ... these children have grown up with as normal.

And I remember asking my kids when they were quite young, just out of curiosity, oh, I think they were maybe six and eight. I was like, oh, who do you think you're gonna, what kind of person do you think you'll be with when you grow up? Do you think you'll wanna get married?

And my son has always just been like, “I don't care, mom.” And my daughter's ... and she's six at the time she goes, “At first I wanna marry a man because I wanna have babies. And then I wanna marry a woman.” [Ash cackles.]

And I was like, okay, in a little bit, we'll explain that you don't have to do both of these things unless you want to, but awesome. [Ash snorts.] [Melissa laughs.]

ash alberg: I just, I love kids so much. I'm like, you guys have so much ... like I've, I always get really protective of the like little queer kiddos, ‘cause I'm like, okay, I don't know what your home life is and if like your whole like nuclear family is on board, but I'm just gonna protect this little bit of you and just encourage it in the way that you're like bringing it out.

I'm not gonna be like here, you need to do this, but I'm just gonna be like, would you like robots or flowers on your jeans or neither? And then whatever you say, cool. That sounds great.

melissa nelson: My son was basically misgendered for all of his childhood, ‘cause he just has this very light blonde, very long hair. He looks very pretty. And he has never once given a shit. Like never once.

And I, maybe part of is that I just never corrected anyone. Was I gonna say that it was bad for him to be called a girl? You know what I mean? Like I think that's where a lot of that comes from is that those are those internal biases that we don't really realize that we're doing, where it's like, like, you run like a girl, you throw, that kind of stuff.

But I, it was just in me immediately. If somebody was like, oh my gosh, your daughter’s so beautiful. I would just say thank you.

ash alberg: Yeah, exactly. Like the offer, like the intention there is to offer a compliment and it's like, why am I gonna ... I do that all the time with Willow. Because she's such a giant dog, people just assume that she's male. And so they're like, oh, what's his name? And I'm like, Willow.

And I'm just like, like my dog literally does give a shit and it really does not matter. And I think, like the problem for so many of these things is that we like, we dig in our heels on behalf of somebody else who may or may not give a shit. And by digging in the heels, we are actually helping to reinforce the biases.

melissa nelson: They ... a hundred percent. That's an education for the person giving the compliment, right, where they may find out later, for some reason ... I may be like, oh, go get your brother. “Oh, I didn't realize!” And it's yeah, because it doesn't matter. And then they're like, oh, maybe a little seed got planted it in that person who goes, oh, maybe it doesn't matter.

ash alberg: Yep. Exactly.

melissa nelson: Or maybe the next time I give a compliment, I will just say, wow, your child has beautiful hair or whatever. Like maybe they'll figure that out, but it's not yeah, trying to rid yourself of that biases. And then the kids are smart. They pick up that shit so fast. Like they get it immediately.

And like now my children are discovering their own sexualities and they have no problems. They're just trying to figure it out. There's no, if I'm this something's wrong with me, it's just, what am I? I'll find out! And it's great.

ash alberg: It's such a gift to be able to just go through the messiness of being human, which is messy in and of itself, but without all of the like shame spiral attached to things. Like that's where we get ourselves in shitty situations. That's where we become dysregulated creatures.

melissa nelson: Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

ash alberg: So how has ritual ... like when I think of like some, witchier yarn stores, Starlight totally falls into this, ‘cause you guys carry like tarot cards. Your branding is just beautiful generally.

But like how has your personal experience with like magic and ritual in, just in general, happened through your life? And then what was it that made you bring that into Starlight?

melissa nelson: That's interesting. And the more I sit with this question, like my rituals, my personal rituals, don't often revolve around what I do for work. Because I came to it in that way of it not being necessarily personal practice, like a lot of people, crafts in general, but specifically knitting and crocheting are this meditative practice.

ash alberg: Yes.

melissa nelson: And I came to it from the, I like to say from the back door. I'm like, oh, hey, what's going on in here? But I think when it comes to that sensibility that you're picking up on, I think a lot of that comes from, again, my aunt who ... her name is Sue and she would self-describe as a witch has had many ritual practices over the years that she has very subtly brought into my life.

ash alberg: Love it.

melissa nelson: It’s just a sensibility, where it's just caring for nature and her craft practices and the ways that she's been a spinner forever and a weaver forever. And then I got the honor of teaching her to knit and has, that has become part of her ritual.

But everything that she does is so thoughtful and purposeful. Like some of us knitters out there are just like, this yarn is cool. What can I make out of it? And she's, I would like to make this thing and I wanted to have this purpose. And so I need a yarn that is like this.

And then she will take a long time to make the thing. And she will work through every problem. She won't give up and she will make the thing and it will have the purpose. And it has always been that way. And I have always admired that because I am a child of the eighties and nineties where it's a lot of instant gratification, a lot of “I don't know how to do it.”

I have a hard time failing, like a real hard time.
ash alberg: Oh, yes. [Both laugh.] I feel that one. [Snorts.]
melissa nelson: Yeah, it's bad. I'm just like, I can't do that. I’m bad at it. ash alberg: Never doing it again. Yeah.

melissa nelson: Nope. I'm not gonna do it. I think that's why I've really stuck with this business ‘cause it's one thing I can really do is knit. I know how to do that. So I'm like, I'm just gonna keep doing that. You asked me a question about knitting, I can answer it every time. [Ash giggles, Melissa laughs.]

So having that sensibility and just always, as a young person, I was a candle burner in the window, so my parents wouldn't know and reading your magic books and putting love spells on teenage boys to hope that they would ... I actually think I did one that worked, and it hasn't ever gone away and every time I see this person, I'm like, you're creeping me out. You're creeping me out.

This was supposed to be that weird thing that I made ... [Both talking at the same time.]

ash alberg: This is the thing with love spells, like they need consent! Otherwise they go very screwy.

melissa nelson: Oh my god. I didn’t know what I was doing!

ash alberg: This is the problem. Nobody tells teenage girls that like, love spells are very powerful. Don't mess with them.

melissa nelson: I ... maybe this is what happened, ‘cause seriously, at this point I avoid this person because every time I see them, I'm just like, don't look at me like that. Don't talk to me like that. Don't touch me like that.

I'm always just like you are creeping me out. What is happening?

ash alberg: Oh my god.

melissa nelson: It has been like 30 years. [Laughs.]

ash alberg: You're also like married with kids now, which like, technically, depending on the relationship status, maybe doesn't ... but like I'm like ...

melissa nelson: And anyway, yeah, I had a lot of dabbling there. And my husband, is he's a tarot deck collector.

ash alberg: Ooh, fun!

melissa nelson: He collects them. He does not read tarot.

ash alberg: Oh, that's even funnier.

melissa nelson: He collects them for the art.

ash alberg: Okay. Yep.

melissa nelson: He loves the art of tarot and so he has this just absolutely gorgeous collection. And so therefore I'm always like, again, you learn to see.

And so it's like, I'm always on the lookout for beautiful tarot decks and ... but also at the same time, very respectful of people who read tarot and practice and all of those things. And so we don't pretend to know how to do that or do that with these decks, just for fun. We don't even go near it.

We're just like, we look at the art that's very pretty. I am waiting for a knitter’s tarot deck. I know those are much more involved than the Oracle decks that have come out, which I'm just so thrilled that they came out, that we get to carry them.

They’re two artists that we have supported for a while and so when they both created Oracle decks at the same time, it was just like, bring it.

ash alberg: Bring me it all in. This is a thing that I love about ... it's funny, ‘cause I feel like as knitters, we know like you can never have too much yarn. You might feel like you might recognize the point where you're like, I will never actually knit all of this, but like you're still gonna keep collecting.

And I feel like there's that ... when it comes to tarot and Oracle decks as well, like you, you may have ones that you are regularly reading from but it doesn't stop you, or it doesn't need to stop you from bringing in another. And it's funny, ‘cause I remember like there was a chunk of time where there seemed to be like maybe a handful of fiber artists were making their own Oracle and tarot decks.

And there were a few people that were like, I don't even think it was actually the artists, but that were like, some so and so is already doing this! And it's, there's space for everybody to be making them. And if you're reading decks, then you know that you actually want more options out there. I'm like ...

melissa nelson: Yeah, that was what was really interesting about those Oracle decks coming out at the same time. And knowing them both, which was great because one, they both did Kickstarters for their decks, which is a really good way for artists to be supported. I really love Kickstarter for that.

And so one I knew was in the middle of a Kickstarter, and the other one was getting ready to launch her Kickstarter. And I just gave her a heads’ up. I said, oh hey, just a heads’ up. This other deck is being Kickstarted currently. And she was devastated. And I was like, don't you worry.

ash alberg: Yeah.
melissa nelson: First of all, you're really different. Second of all, you're gonna

be fine. And she was funded in two days.
ash alberg: This is the thing.
melissa nelson: She was like, oh, you're right. It's okay. Yeah.

ash alberg: I think there's this ... especially when it's like an either, I think especially when it's a newer project, like when you've been in business for long enough in whatever art form craft that you are doing, then you learn oh yeah, there's definitely space for all of us.

But when you're like newer in business and everything feels like very precious and your whole identity is tied up in the art and you're still also like seeking

validation from outside to feel like, yes, my art is valid. Like you get to a point once you've had a practice long enough that you're like, I don't actually give a shit about that outside validation. I am doing the work regardless.

But I think there's a really natural stage early on where you're like, no, I actually need other people to tell me that what I am doing with my time is valid. And so everything just feels so precious. And the scarcity mindset that attaches itself there is like a really natural response and also something that I'm just like desperately hoping that as a community, collectively, we recognize as not actually helpful.

melissa nelson: Yeah. That is a really tricky one and it's definitely something that I have struggled with in my life in general, but specifically in business. And I think what ... I didn't remember it because in, when I was doing doula work, there's no competition feel. Like there's a very real feel of, you interview for jobs and you interview all the time.

So you get really good at interviewing and then you get really good at representing yourself honestly ‘cause you don't realize once you work with a client, that's not a good match that it's really not good for anyone and especially you, but the clients too. And so you wanna be a good match and so if you don't get hired, you're like, I wasn't the right doula for them and that's okay.

But then I went back into the business world and that competition like immediately was like slapping me in the face. And I named it competition anxiety because it was that feeling of, I would see somebody do something and I would be like, should I be doing that, or why are they doing that and I'm not doing that? Or I was doing that first, why are they doing it now? And a lot of just, unhelpful feelings around the, that, that anxiety, that, that competition. And I realized that it stems from similar feelings to ...

ash alberg: Yes.

melissa nelson: ... jealousy as something also like in my personal life that I've grappled with. Friendships, romantically, whatever. And so I, when I started to do a lot of work on that, I realized that it, that work is applicable to my business work.

ash alberg: Absolutely.

melissa nelson: That what is it about worrying about what other people think of me that makes me feel these awful feelings, and how can I reframe it?

Again, like you said, like making room for everyone, that there is space for everyone. Eliminating that scarcity mindset because the more you do you, uniquely you, the way you do it, the more people come naturally to you and to support you.

But if you are only bouncing off of what everyone else is doing, then you are not you are not you. People have a harder time seeing you through all the noise.

ash alberg: Exactly.
melissa nelson: And so the jealousy doesn't help that because it's just a

comparison.
ash alberg: Yeah.

melissa nelson: The anxiety doesn't help that because you're not focusing on those things that actually like, are you that make you flourish that make you grow.

ash alberg: Exactly. Exactly.
melissa nelson: It's a constant journey and it's a lot, I will admit it's a lot easier

for me to talk about than it is for me to practice. ash alberg: Oh, a hundred percent. [Laughs.]

melissa nelson: But the more I talk about it, the better are at practicing it I am so I just, again, like naming it, admitting it. Getting it out into the open and saying, this is why I react this way when these things happen, because I grapple with anxiety around it.

And I will even let my employees know because they get nervous about sometimes telling me that something’s happening, like something that's, oh, this shop is doing the same thing we're doing because they know that I get ... and I'm no, you can tell me it's okay. I need to have the initial reactions so that I can then go through my process.

ash alberg: Exactly. Yeah, I think that's an important part of it, right, is that that initial feeling is a hundred percent valid. It's then like how you act upon it, that then makes the bigger the bigger deal. And the reframe is super important, right?

Like in jealousy there, we can actually find some useful things at the core of it. I am also a jealous creature. And I've also lived through my own jealousy when it's not healthy, but I've also been on the receiving end of other people's jealousy when it's unhealthy.

And it's I, as a result, I've drawn some like really strict boundaries around regardless of, how jealous I might feel, there is no way that I will ever do X, Y, Z action as a result, because I have had X, Y, Z action done to me and it’s not okay, and so I gotta figure out how to deal with my jealousy. And I also expect you, other person in my life, to deal with your jealousy accordingly.

Like there, there are these boundaries in which we need to maintain them in order to respect each other. But like the jealousy that is a natural occurrence is also still valid and figuring out, like I think one of the things that I have recently been practicing with jealousy is like, when I feel jealous in that moment, trying to recognize what is the thing that I am perceiving that they have that I want, because it's always perception.

Like we never actually know people's like lives so intimately that we, unless it's like an intimate partner, but even then you don't necessarily know every single thing that's going through their head, all of that. So like understanding that, especially when it's business related, okay, I have a perception that they are having X success or X thing that they have gotten and that all, everything attached to that is positive and wonderful, and there's nothing negative that could possibly be attached to it.

And from that, what do I actually want if that exact same thing were to occur in my life? Do I even actually want that thing? Or is there like a facet of it ... and it's generally that. It's not that I actually want that specific situation. It's that I want something around that and figuring out, okay, how can I do that myself or do I actually not want that at all, and I want something else instead?

melissa nelson: I think some of it is, it comes from a little bit of fear too, like if I don't have that, or if they're doing it, then I can't do it.

ash alberg: Yes.

melissa nelson: And if I don't have that, or I can't do that, then does it invalidate me or who I thought I was? Yeah, I found that a lot of my jealousy comes from fear. Especially early on when I didn't have as much confidence in my business.

And then it just, again, like the lessons that I've had to learn over and over again, too many times. It’s just that, like you have to refocus that energy and you have to go okay, so I am jealous because I'm scared.

ash alberg: Yep.

melissa nelson: And I'm scared what I might lose my business. I might, I might have some bad days and owe money, whatever those things are. And it's okay, so focus on what grows your business, focus on what keeps you financially secure. Reframe those things into what you can actually do for yourself that has nothing to do with that other person or that other action or whatever, but it's just a positive thing for you.

And then use that energy for that. That's been really helpful. I've read a lot of books on jealousy. Like just, I read a lot, like when I get curious about something I'm ...

[Both talking at the same time.]
ash alberg: [Indecipherable.] Yeah.

melissa nelson: [Laughs.] And so there's a lot of tools that I have employed. When you get that, just ugh, feeling that you're like, where do I go with this feeling? I don't want it. I don't like it, it's the worst feeling.

And one of the best tricks that I learned was like, do something really nice for yourself in that moment when you have that feeling.

ash alberg: Yes.

melissa nelson: And that will ... it's like a Pavlovian thing. If you do it enough, then every time a jealous feeling comes up, you get a feeling of wellbeing that coincides with it.

You're just reaffirming yourself and your love for yourself and that care for yourself. And so you're like, it's almost like a magic shield that appears ‘cause you're like, oh, whenever this happens, I do these wonderful things. [Laughs.]

ash alberg: Yeah. That’s so smart. melissa nelson: It has really helped.

ash alberg: And it helps, it makes so much sense ‘cause it's like you're helping yourself to stay regulated. And I honestly, especially through the pandemic, just working on my own regulation and then also just seeing how dysregulated, especially online. And like, we used to live in a time where you were told don't read the comments and now we literally run businesses on platforms where you have to read the comments in order for your business to like function on that platform.

But it's like people, we need so much in society right now to be supporting more people. And the like gaps between the haves and the have-nots is so extreme and it's entirely natural that people are going to feel scarcity and to feel like they don't have enough and to feel like they're like on the edge and on the precipice and to not have easy access to tools that could help them.

And also, there's only so much that other people can help you as well. There's a level of personal responsibility that I think is, even when we're like in the absolute, like depth of a mental health crisis, there's only so much that other people can help you to come onto the other side of that.

And people can maintain that for a certain chunk of time, but ultimately, there does still need to be some point where you take some responsibility. And I really like ... I don't know if you know Brene's, Brene Brown's method that she does with her family, but they do this check in where they'll say, okay, what's everybody functioning at today? And you give like a percentage and you're like, I'm at 85% today, or I'm at like 72%.

And the kind of running thing is that okay, as a family unit, where is everybody at? If somebody's at 30%, then they need to spend time recouping so like other people in the household will, will help out. But if everybody is functioning at 30%, everything else outside needs to stop. We need to just focus on those basics of sleep, nourishing food, rest, until you're able to be back at capacity.

And what I really love about it is that if like everybody's hundred percent is going to look entirely different. And especially when you are in a relationship that involves somebody with a chronic illness or somebody with mental health illness, or like the ... somebody's in more frequently a caregiver role or a caretaker role, it's still requires both parties to figure out okay, out of my personal hundred, where am I at in any given day?

Because I think it's really natural for us to fall into these roles of either I take care of everybody in my life, or I expect everybody else to do things for me because I have lived a hard life in whatever way and so I deserve things. And

it's both of those are like natural to life circumstances, but there does still come a point where if every single day you're saying I'm at 30%, then you are either lying. You are actually at 30% and you need to be doing something to get yourself back up to a more functional level.

And simultaneously, if you're always saying, oh, I'm at 80%, I'm at 90%. I'm great. I'm good. Again, you're either lying or you are, maybe you are functioning at that level, but there's gonna be some days where you're not. And so allowing yourself to recognize that you don't always have to be functioning at 80 or 90% or 100%, and that it's okay to ask for help at times.

And that it's okay to, even if you are the person who's normally taking care of your partner, for your partner to be able to take care of you and doing that in community as well. And doing that in workplaces as well, where it's yeah, you might have this like hierarchy of who's in charge, but that doesn't mean that we can't be benefiting from like more of ... kinda like what we were talking about earlier, like dialogue, like having this interchange.

melissa nelson: Yeah. I think that that's something that we've worked really hard at Starlight to foster, is that community feel around not just us and our customers, but us as a staff. Like whenever I bring people in, especially this last round of hires that I did, my existing staff was like, please make it people that we want to know and want to be with, because there is this understanding that our community extends to the workplace and that there has to be a balance.

And I work hard to make sure that my employees feel that they don't have to be a hundred percent every single time they show up for work and that there might be moments and days, and maybe even weeks where they're not. And we got you, and I think that just makes it a stronger ... not just bond between everyone there, but then it gives them the opportunity to be able to give. Customer service is hard.

ash alberg: Yes.

melissa nelson: It is taxing emotionally and physically. And I recognize that and giving my people the ... hopefully the feeling of you don't have to, you don't have to be perfect all the time, that if you need rest, if you need to go home early, if you need a random day off, I don't need to know why, like work life balance, we’ll make it happen.

And I'm not that boss that's, I can't believe you didn't do it all perfect every single time. I may be picky about stuff. I may be like, the shelf isn't as straight

as I'd like it to be, but that's me being the boss. That's, it's still a job, but I'm not gonna be like, I can't believe you didn't do this. What's wrong with you?

ash alberg: Yes.

melissa nelson: I’d be like, hey, do this when you have a moment. And I think that it, I don't know. I think that it works. I think initially, like when I had my first shop, I fostered all of this, “Don't worry, I'll do it.” That's what I would always do.

And I had lovely employees who loved their jobs, but they would sit over here and knit and chat and I would stock the shelves and I would clean and I would check out customers because I was like, oh no, I'll do it. I'll do it. Don't worry. Don't worry. I'll take care of it. The caretaker.

And I've had to break myself of those habits over a long period of time ‘cause I had that business and then I had kids.

ash alberg: Yep.
melissa nelson: And talk about oh, don't worry, I'll do it. ash alberg: Yeah, no kidding.

melissa nelson: Beyond. And then you just get in this habit of anything, you're around, you just take care of it. You just, ‘cause you can. And slowly over time. I was like, wait, I'm not always a hundred percent, so how am I gonna give and take care of everyone all the time when I, it's like my meter’s going down and down and down and down and end of the day, there's nothing left for me.

And with this business, I made very conscious decisions to actually delegate for my own health.

ash alberg: Yeah.

melissa nelson: But also to understand that everybody's not gonna be, see the world the same way I see it and see the priorities the same way I see it. And so actually lead ... be a better boss because people want that.

They wanna know what's expected of them. They wanna know how they can do a good job. And it's a balance.

ash alberg: Yes.

melissa nelson: I feel that's what people experience, that's what people are seeing when they see us when they come into our store and they're like, just feels good in here.

What is this that I'm seeing? What is this that I'm feeling? And it's not just how it looks, which is sure, a big part of it, but it's how that energy is just constantly permeating the shop of like, people are there because they want to be there. People are working that job because they like it. I have always seen Starlight as like a steppingstone, as retail.

Very few people work a job like that for the rest of their lives. It's usually a transition, a placeholder. And so my responsibility there is to give enough support to the people that are with me for as long as they're with me to help them on their transition.

And that's why facilitator is one of my titles for myself, just helping other people achieve what they want or need to achieve. And that seems to be something that I am good at. And so that has flowed through to employees and sometimes to customers too. We've had customers that have come in terrible moments in their lives, have even treated us like crap, but they, but they keep coming in.

And then we had a couple customers that this happened, where we were just like, why does that woman keep coming in here? She is awful to us. And then realizing eventually over a long period of time that maybe she's going through a really terrible divorce and just felt good to come in here but didn't have anything to give in that moment.

ash alberg: Yeah.

melissa nelson: And we just kept filling her cup for her over and over again, until she softened and became this lovely person that we really liked to be around.

But she just didn't have enough to give that back to us. I was like, we ... for the longest time, we couldn't figure it out.

ash alberg: Like why do you keep on coming in if you seem so miserable when you're here?

melissa nelson: Yes. Yes. And it wasn't that she was miserable in our store. It was, she was miserable all the time and our store gave her just a little something, just a little happiness because people were consistent. My employees were consistent with her. They were kind, they were giving and loving and understanding every single time.

We've had other customers who have come in crises because they didn't know where else to go and just sit with us. And we're a yarn store. Like we don't ... [Ash laughs.] We sell yarn, we knit, but when you create community and you make a space, that is ... I hesitate to say a safe space because that's really subjective. But for some people, yeah, it feels safe to them and they know that we've got their back, even if it's just to fall apart for a minute, and then they buy some yarn and feel better.

And we're like, great. Like we can take this moment. We had this happen where someone came in crises, had needed to cry with one of our employees for a little bit. And there was another customer in the store at the time. And our other employee helped that customer and they were fine.

And that customer came back and wrote a review and wrote about her experience and said, “I was in there when someone was having a crisis and everyone was so kind to her that it made me feel really good.” And I was just like, how can anybody just say that it's just yarn or it's just a business, when it can be so much more?

ash alberg: Yes.

melissa nelson: That is something that, I don't know, I think it happens naturally. I think it's also fostered. But that's the thing I would say that I'm the most proud of when it comes to what we do. And I think this, the sort of unnameable quality ...

ash alberg: Yeah.

melissa nelson: ... of Starlight. So I think maybe when you say that there's a witchy feel, right, that comes through and what we do, I think that's what it is. A little bit of that, like in, in touch with what's real, what's important ...

ash alberg: Yes.

melissa nelson: ... in our community. And I don't care if you didn't buy your yarn from me and you need me to pick you up a drop stitch for you. Like it's, my business is about you. It's not about that yarn that you bought.

Maybe you got gifted that yarn, or maybe you just had a really nice experience in another store and bought a skein and that's great. And when it comes to business practices and things, those things pan out. If you're being realistic, someone has a good experience, they're gonna come back, they're gonna buy yarn. But you don't have to focus on that.

ash alberg: Yep.
melissa nelson: You just don't. You can be kind and do the right thing and the

returns will come. ash alberg: Yes. melissa nelson: Yeah.

ash alberg: I love that a lot. ‘Cause I think it's also like absolutely the way that I see my own witchcraft where it's yeah, you can like structure it as being like, oh, this is specifically a spell.

It's really what it comes down to is like being aware, like being tuned into intuition and being tuned into forces and energies and trusting that the universe is going to balance things out. And it may not be the way that you're expecting in the same way that like that love potion maybe doesn't exactly work out the way you think it’s gonna.

melissa nelson: Maybe not. [Both laugh.]
ash alberg: But like, you know, the universe is going to be like you're giving

me this, I'll give you this back. melissa nelson: Yeah.

ash alberg: And it might come at a completely different timeframe than you're expecting and in a completely different format than you're expecting, but I don’t know, I've had a number of friends over the years who are like much more structured witches than I am, who will ... they're like very reticent to do any sort of hexing because that putting that energy out is like, you better know that

what you're doing is like really on track and also that like you're ready for whatever the consequences are.

And they're much more interested in rather than doing hexing in having protection spells and then also doing road opening spells, where it's like asking the universe for not something specific, but for something that you're looking for overall. If it's, I need to pay this bill, it's not “I need X amount of money to appear in my bank account.”

It's, “I am asking for abundance to come.” And maybe that means that you pay that bill by some other means, or that you're given a bit of leeway on paying that bill and then something else comes in the way.

melissa nelson: Right.

ash alberg: But like, it's interesting. Yeah.

melissa nelson: I've always felt that way about money. It's such a weird thing, but I've ... and it's probably just a, it's funny ‘cause I talk to myself of it all the time and I'm like, oh, it's probably just privilege. And, but all my life, whenever I have been in a spot where I'm like, oh no, I overdrew my bank account or oh no, I did something, like I was just not so good with money when I was younger.

And a check would just arrive from random things. Oh, you overpaid your electric bill or there was a weird settlement. Here's 50 bucks. Like nothing huge, but just enough to get me through just at the right time almost every time.

It's like what? Okay. And it's, eventually I just, you don't count on it. You don't think about it. You don't wish for it. You just go, okay. I'm grateful. Thank you. And move forward.

ash alberg: Yeah. Not really sure how this happened, but it did. It's funny, like my ... that completely aligns with my dad's philosophy about money is which like, my mom grew, my poppy, who was my mom's dad was a bank manager. So whenever we were talking money, when I was a child, it was generally my mom giving us money lessons.

We would fill the teddy bear jar, had fun like rolling the coins. Like it was always budgeting, all of those things, that was definitely mom's domain. Dad and I now of talk about money more specifically because I run my business. And so we just, we have different kinds of conversations about money.

But he has always been of the opinion that money will be there. Like it may not be as much as you think you need, or as much as you want, but there will always be enough do something with, and that's, I think ... his also like method as like a younger working person was always okay, I'll hustle to make it happen.

Like he, the child of immigrant, post-war parents who like, they did the same thing. They're like, okay, we are in a new country. We don't necessarily speak the language yet. We're gonna have to. Meanwhile, we've got four kids that we have to raise and we'll just make it happen.

And so my dad definitely took that energy on. And so yeah, there was never necessarily this expectation of I deserve X amount or I expect to have X amount come to me in this moment, but there was always this idea of okay, if I don't have enough for this thing, there's a way to make it happen. And there's definitely yes, there absolutely privilege and class privilege and racial privilege and lots of all of the privileges that will impact the way that might happen.

But I think, like capitalism and the kyriarchy like to make us think that if you don't have certain things at your disposal that you're just gonna get absolutely nothing. And that's where that scarcity comes in, where like it's a pie and the more that other people take from the pie, then there's gonna be less for you and that's not actually true.

And actually one of, I think, the biggest resistance spells is being like, nope, fuck you. That's a lie. I believe that there is more than enough to go around and that by putting this energy out, it will come back to me.

melissa nelson: Yeah. Yeah. It's a good, it's good for so many things, right? Whether it's financial or whether it's just energetic, like I think ... I did this recently with friends where I was feeling like friendships that I had for a very long time were ... I wouldn't call them damaged, but they were distant.

They had ... distance had grown between us and I was feeling the void from that. And I started to feel really sorry for myself. What did I do? Why don't they wanna be around me? Blah, blah, blah, blah. When I knew in my heart of hearts that I was all also not feeling like being close to them either.

ash alberg: yeah.

melissa nelson: But that's that jealousy, whatever thing that comes up and I finally was like, no, I want to have friendships so I am going to have

friendships. And then people that were already in my life, I just took a moment and appreciated them. And then suddenly friendships!

ash alberg: Yeah.

melissa nelson: They were right in front of me the whole time.

ash alberg: Yes.

melissa nelson: But I was distracted by, oh, poor me. Instead of putting the positive energy out there.

ash alberg: Yes.
melissa nelson: And once a positive energy happened, everything else just

followed. Yeah. Feels like it's there.

ash alberg: It's, yeah. It's funny. It's so interesting because I think a lot of times I think the where the toxic side of like positivity mindset and things like that come in play is when it's like at the expense of anything else. And also without acknowledgement of privilege when it's at play, which it frequently is.

And also that there is effort involved, right? It's ... you don't, like very rarely do we get to just wish a thing. And it happens without anything ...

melissa nelson: Right.

ash alberg: It's sort of like when people are like, oh, that person's successful out of nowhere, they're an overnight success. It's like no, you just don't know about the seven years that they've been building a thing.

melissa nelson: It's overnight to you ‘cause you just found out. ash alberg: [Laughs.] Yeah, exactly.
melissa nelson: Yeah.

ash alberg: And yeah, it's that same thing of ... I had a similar thing recently and I think like also COVID life, winter life, like all of these things, we hibernate and recently I was like, man, I feel just so isolated and alone. And I miss people and I feel like I have no friends.

And I then immediately was like, oh no, yeah, I haven't spoken to some of these folks in a while, but also I haven't spoken, like I haven't put out the energy either. And it's not on just them to put some effort out. Like I am not doing the work on my end too.

melissa nelson: Yep. That is a real hard one. That's that sort of admitting thing, where we dig in and we don't wanna admit when we're wrong and that's part of it is when we wanna blame everyone else because it feels better and it's not on us. But we have the power to change the situation by just taking on a little bit more of that responsibility.

But gosh, that's the whole thing. My mom does this to me a lot where it's I haven't heard from you. Yeah, I haven't heard from you either.

ash alberg: Yeah. [Laugh-snorts.]
melissa nelson: But yeah. I'm like, it was that, that old ... there's just as many

numbers in my telephone number as there are in yours.

Like it's, so I made a vow to never say that. I just know, like, how come you haven't called me? It's, I haven't called you either. And if I have called you, I can say that. But if I haven't ... [Laughs.]

ash alberg: Exactly. Yep. Tep. There yeah, it is that thing of again, like if it's 90% yours, there's still 10% that's mine. And there, if I have put in the energy and it's like, when people complain about like people that have, been voted in, I'm like, did you vote? Because if you didn't vote, you don't get to complain.

melissa nelson: No, you can’t say a word. Yep.

ash alberg: It's and yes, it may be shitty. You should have fucking voted. And it is different if you tried to vote and there was voter suppression. That's, you did put the energy in ...

melissa nelson: You can complain all day then.

ash alberg: You were thwarted, you have extra right to complain. But if you legitimately just couldn't be bothered and now you're unhappy with the result, like fucking get off your ass and do something about it next time.

melissa nelson: This happens a lot about little things, I've noticed. Like why isn't this park cleaner? Or why isn't this ... and I'm, and in my head, I'm always

like, you have control over this. You literally can go and pick up the trash if you want to.

ash alberg: Yeah.

melissa nelson: And there's a difference between like I, “Oh, we should probably do something about getting this trash picked up,” and [scoffs] “How come nobody's done anything?” [Laughs.]

ash alberg: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
melissa nelson: Well, nobody includes you.

ash alberg: Yeah. Yep. And yeah, it's always, I always find it really funny because I find a lot of the times the folks that will complain louder are folks that have enough privilege to do a relatively easy fix to it. Like I think of exactly that situation where it's like, oh, something's not clean, and I'm like, I know multiple, like volunteer-run groups that are run in the inner city of this city that I live in.

And every single week, multiple times a week, they are out there checking on their community. But they're also like doing needle cleanup. They are picking up trash, they are making sure that things are safe. They are making sure that like dangerous things are off of the streets.

And it's they are folks that are like frequently at the most vulnerable of so many, like things within society, including like job security and finances and dealing with like overt racism and subvert racism. There's so much, and yet they fucking have time to go out and [audio cut out] streets.

And so do you! It's not just, yeah, okay, you paid more taxes. Congratulations. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's ... yeah. It's funny. [Melissa laughs.]

So what's your ... I was gonna take us to our next question, but I, then I thought, what's your favorite thing that you have brought into the shop? Like what feels like the best addition?

melissa nelson: Like product-wise?

ash alberg: Yeeah. Or ... yeah, let's go with product-wise and then also just like generally, like what's a thing that you really happy you made the decision with for the shop

melissa nelson: Product-wise ... that's a really good question. It, it changes all the time. So if I'm really gonna answer it honestly, like my favorite thing to do to bring in products is to quote unquote, discover people. So I really enjoy finding someone who I can tell that they're really talented, that maybe they don't have a lot of exposure yet.

And we are in a very fortunate position to have some opportunity to put people in front of an audience. And so I like to use that and put people in front of an audience and help them grow their businesses. So I guess it changes ‘cause I love seeing somebody get popular and explode and grow and be able to do what it is they love and as ... for a living.

I've watched a lot of people, dyers and makers, that were doing it on the side, be able to quit their day jobs and do it for a living. So that's my favorite thing.

ash alberg: That’s amazing. That's such a cool thing to do for others.

melissa nelson: I really ... sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't, sometimes people aren't ready for that. Like sometimes it's like, like, oh, I can't do that much.

ash alberg: Yes.

melissa nelson: It's like, OK. And sometimes people back up, back away from it and that's okay. But most of the time people are like, I see them pop up in other stores and I see their audiences grow and it's, it just makes me really happy.

So that's like my favorite thing to do with product.
ash alberg: It's a facilitator role again for you.
melissa nelson: The facilitator. Yeah. That's what I enjoy doing. Hey, stop that. [To something not audible.]

Yeah. As far as ... I also like to bring in art into the shop sometimes. So I think when my employees thought I was crazy, but during the pandemic I brought in these enormous LED lit gears and a LED clock that were part of this Alice in Wonderland stage set ...

ash alberg: Cool.

melissa nelson: ... that I purchased from the people who made it, because at the beginning of the pandemic, they couldn't make stage sets ‘cause there was no shows. And so they were selling off all of their set materials. And so we bought some of those and I brought them into the shop and so now we have these enormous LED gears in the shop that I adore.

And meanwhile everybody is like ... [Both talking at the same time.]
ash alberg: I think it'd be so cool.

melissa nelson: ... what is happening? But I like to do stuff like that. I like to have all my shelves ... not all of them, but I, when I can afford it, I like to have my shelves custom made. I have a friend that's a carpenter, makes really beautiful work, so I like to shoot business his way when I can.

But yeah, I don't know. I like, we like to discover new and fresh stuff. We like to see people that are being creative and get their products out on the market. Yeah.

ash alberg: Amazing. I think that's, it's something that is undervalued with small businesses, but like the power that a small business has to create economies, like micro-economies, that very directly benefit in a much bigger way than working for somebody that, like a larger corporation does for other small businesses.

Like it's, you're, you become this like hub space. Which is also why I have always loved, like as a dyer I'm like, yeah, if I sell something retail, then obviously I make more money than if I sell it wholesale. But I love my wholesale partners. Like it is always so nice to be able to be like, I'm gonna send this to you.

I'm not gonna get as much money per item, but I'm gonna get a nice lump sum. You're gonna fill your shelves. Your customers are gonna enjoy things. Like you can reach people that maybe don't wanna deal, especially when it's like shipping costs and things like that. Like ...

melissa nelson: I feel like the dyers that can do wholesale, and I know it's like a real balance there, but what the retail store does is it is multifaceted. It puts the

product in front of potential buyers that may have never seen in the product or would never see the product otherwise, so it grows the customer base for the product in general.

ash alberg: Yep.

melissa nelson: You also have built in advertising from ... every product we bring in, we're in love with. So if somebody comes in the store and they're like, ooh, we're like, oh my god, did you see this? You have to look! We're selling it as a fan of the product.

And even if the person doesn't buy it, like now they have brand recognition and they can tell their friend or, oh, I saw this at Starlight or whatever. And so it's a really good partnership, I think, when we can do that. It's really, there's that jealousy piece that comes in for me sometimes when I'm like, I show it to a customer and then they go buy it directly from the dyer and I'm like, ahh! [Ash laughs.]

But I get it. I'm a consumer too. So it's like a balance with, like I said. And sometimes it's things like, you ... like dyers can only have so much inventory at once. It's hard to carry inventory, whereas a shop, that's what we do is carry inventory. And so often we'll have things available that the dyer doesn't even have available.

And so it's a good balance for the customer to find what they're looking for.

ash alberg: Yeah, absolutely. And it's always nice. I, it's funny, I sometimes I'll have customers that are like, worried about buying from one of my wholesale stores, rather than from me directly. I'm like no, please go and buy from them.

Like it actually, if it just sits on their shelves because you try and buy from me instead, I appreciate you doing both but if I have partnered with a store, like trust that I've vetted them. I like them. I want their doors to stay open. And so you buying my wool is a good thing for all of us.

melissa nelson: Yes. Support it all. Yes.
ash alberg: Yeah. Yeah. So what's something that you wish you'd been told

about magic or ritual or ... when you were younger?

melissa nelson: That's a good question. I think that I wish that it was more taught like historically as part of our history as a human race. I grew up in a

very suburban, very white area and a lot of the things that, in my area, they weren't really ... it was just starting to turn over in like with the kind of history that was being taught but I still had to like, be, have many aha moments about things like, “Oh, did you realize Christmas was actually a pagan holiday before ...?” and all those little weird facts that like, the kids just know that now. They're taught it in school!

ash alberg: Yeah.
melissa nelson: But I was not. ash alberg: Yep.

melissa nelson: And to have to, like strip off the layers of our like pseudo Christian society that we grow, what I grew up with, and realize that that's just,all of it's borrowed or stolen.

ash alberg: Yes.
melissa nelson: That it is just, I wish that I didn't have to unlearn those things.

It could have just been like it is for my kids where that's the truth and the reality of magic and ritual is part of every known civilization going way back, but you don't get to learn about those things because we're so concerned with our 250 year history of this country, instead of the like rich history of the stewards of this land that happened the thousands and thousands of years before us.

That's what we should have spent much more time on, and that's what I wish I had a greater foundation in. To appreciate, like maybe I'm not the best practitioner or maybe I'm not as connected, but maybe I would be if that was something that was given to me at those earlier ages.

ash alberg: Yeah.

melissa nelson: So yeah. [Chuckles.] That's, that would be nice.

ash alberg: It’s so true. Yeah, it's so interesting. And I think you hit the nail in the head there where like the history that is taught in schools ... and obviously Canada's got a different curriculum than what's taught in the States, but like just the ... even if we just look at the basics of they don't, they, they are now teaching Indigenous history.

It's been the last, this current generation of children that is learning that. And it was like, starting to be talked about when I was in school of oh, maybe if this wasn't all like cookies and rainbows, like maybe we will acknowledge the fact that like the Hudson's Bay blankets were full of small pox.

And that was, we won't use the word genocide but we will acknowledge that like maybe we weren't the nicest people like ...

melissa nelson: Yeah. Yep.

ash alberg: That yeah, when you look at the timeframe of what each of the countries has been like, yes, there are important things that have happened in the last couple hundred years in terms of what has happened globally in the world, in terms of the like waves of immigration and what in other spots of the world caused that immigration to happen.

But also, there are thousands of years of history that is directly related to this land that we currently sit on that is not acknowledged or is now just being acknowledged. And it’s like ...

melissa nelson: It's still a really ... it's hard because my kids are getting a great public education right now. Like I'm really happy with our school system and what they teach in a very progressive. They get tons and tons of Black history lessons and lessons on racism and it's lovely, but there still is a ... an extreme imbalanced approach to the history of this land.

That is still a little tough. At least my kids weren't taught that Columbus discovered this country.

ash alberg: Yeah. [Cackles.] melissa nelson: I was.

ash alberg: It is ... I'm pretty sure that we were taught a similar thing of we're just gonna skim over the thousands of years that people were already living here, except for some reason there's like always been ... and I live in a province where I think at this point it's over 50%, and I can't remember the exact percentage, but over 50% of Manitobans are Indigenous or Métis.

melissa nelson: Really?

ash alberg: Yeah, it's like very high percentage. And so we were also taught a little bit more. Like Louis Riel has been a folk hero in Manitoba since I was a child. The ... in other parts of the country than the are just like, oh yeah, he was this like, literally they would just call him a madman.

Here there was a little bit more of, no, he's our like, he's our folk hero. Led the Métis nation. And so there was a little bit more of that, that I was taught. But just, and then like when I would go out east, then I would like, just because of the way that my family functions, then we would learn about the Indigenous tales there in terms of Glooscap and those creation stories.

But that wasn't what was being taught in school. That was what I was consuming because of the ways that my parents moved me through the world. And when I think of like, did we learn in school? Definitely similar thing of we'll talk about the settlers and what happened once they were here.

And we will acknowledge that there were Inuit folks that lived up north who were here before then, but that's because the Europeans just would never consider going that far north. And they were the ones that were here and it's yeah, they were, and also there were a bunch of other people also here.

melissa nelson: Yeah, like a bunch of unique cultures. That's the thing too, is that, we, when I was, when I learned anything about Native Americans, it was always as one lump.

ash alberg: Yeah. It's this is a monolith and it's, no.

melissa nelson: Quite different. Yeah. I have a friend who is a tribal member. And he went to a ceremony with us recently, which was a cacao ceremony that was matched with a death cafe.

ash alberg: Whoa.

melissa nelson: So it was a very Western meets South American mishmash. Very respectfully done, but we invited our friend to come with us and I was like, hey, this is a couple of white people. They're doing their best to respect.

The death cafe is a very white thing, but the cacao ceremony is not, and I was like, I'm very curious to know what you bring from this.

And after that, we had a very interesting conversation about ritual, about what the current generations of people can own from those ancient traditions and

rituals including tribal members, Native Americans and things like that because they here they do a lot of that like, they want to they wanna focus on like percentages, right? Percentage of your blood is from ...

ash alberg: Yes.
melissa nelson: ... this particular tribe and all this kind of thing. ash alberg: Which is like white supremacy at work.

melissa nelson: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And he was talking about that too. And he was like, if a child is raised in a family, like I say, a white child is raised in a tribal family and can speak the language and knows the culture and does that make that child any less a member of that tribe? And does it make them less a steward of that culture?

And we just really were just going round and round about what is it, what is appreciating and what is appropriating? And especially when you're participating in these rituals, what does it bring to you and how do you acknowledge your place in that?

And acknowledging that as a very Northern European descended woman, I don't have those things that I attach to. I'm like, unless I wanna go to some Norse, mythological, like Viking-style rituals, which are not necessarily all that great. That's like, I don't have it.

And how some of us feel lost because of it, feel lost without ownership of anything of that kind. And I think that's something that like, I look to him sometimes just to see, and he's just, he's always so chilled about all of it. He's like, you do what makes you feel good.

I’m like, thank you? [Laughs.] Thank you for that permission. That's that box checking, right? Where I'm just like, tell me I'm OK. Tell me I'm doing it right!

ash alberg: But I think that's part of what ... like the thing about white supremacy is that it fucks over everybody and it fucks over Black and Brown people in a really specific, very violent way. And it fucks over white folks in a different kind of way in terms of removing knowledge about what those cultural practices are.

And it's like, everybody is a monolith and we're gonna have this like, this like fake identity that is not actually rooted in reality. Like when you look at white

sup-- the folks that are considered white over time has shifted. It's when, like for Jewish folks, like when it's convenient, then you're considered white. When it's not convenient, then you're not.

And it like, it's so insidious and it causes ... in the same way that patriarchy causes violence to cis men, as well as everybody else, it causes it in a different kind of a way. And as somebody who has any sort of privilege within those oppressive systems, then you benefit in other kinds of ways but it doesn't mean that they are good for you.

It's ... you take a different ...
melissa nelson: Yeah. Yeah. [Chuckles.] ash alberg: I don't know. None of it's simple melissa nelson: It’s true.

ash alberg: Merp. But I do, I do ... like looping us back around to your answer, I think there is hope in teaching broader ranges of stories and in teaching our kids critical thinking skills and in teaching them to look at different stories and learning to recognize that there is validity in different stories and also to question the stories that you are told, especially if they're being told as being like the one single truth.

There's, that should immediately be ringing alarm bells.

melissa nelson: Even just teaching kids to question, which it seems like a simple task, but it isn't. You have to provide them with facts that show them that questioning is valuable.

ash alberg: Yes.
melissa nelson: It helps. I took, I took my kids to very easy European countries

when they were younger and it was something I had always wanted to do.

And I, my dad passed away and I got a little bit of money and I was like, okay, this is my opportunity. And I took them and I, and it wasn't that I felt like, ah, they need to see these places. They need to see this thing or that thing. What I wanted them to see was that there are people that are different from them.

I didn't care how they saw it. I just wanted them to go, whoa, this is ... oh, this isn't what I'm used to.

ash alberg: Yeah.

melissa nelson: And this food is different. And the, and this, this accent is different. We went to mostly English speaking places ‘cause they were young and ...

ash alberg: But even then, there's some significant ... like the amount of culture shock I got went the first time I went to London is like ... Canada versus London. Like I grew up in a city in Canada and I went to London. Like it, there should be enough overlap. I, and there's a lot of overlap, but there's still significant differences.

melissa nelson: You can navigate it. You're not lost, but it just really shows you like that a lot can be different from what you know, and that you should always take a moment to question.

ash alberg: Yes.

melissa nelson: Oh, maybe this person is coming from a place that is not the same as mine. And of course it, I planted this wanderlust in them that they're like, where are we going next? Where are we going next?

You guys don't understand how expensive it's to travel! But that's, I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful for the opportunity to just give ‘em, give ‘em a beat. We went to Iceland for two days on our stopover and so hearing Icelandic and seeing the language written out and they were just like, what is happening?!

And I'm like, and Iceland also is a very easy place to visit. But it was just, they, it opened their eyes in a very formidable time in their lives. Which, again, like I said, I'm very grateful for that opportunity. I wish I had it at a younger age too.

I did get to go to London as well, it was my first Europe trip. I was 19 and I got to go with school, and I was like, what?! Like totally blew my mind and I feel like everyone should travel a little, at least a little just for perspective.

ash alberg: Yep, absolutely. Agreed completely. Yeah. It's travel really is ... and right now it's driving me nuts with COVID ‘cause travel is like one of the things that I value myself. Like it's one of my highest values, but I also think that just everybody needs to do a little bit of travel.

Even if it's not something that you want to do for your whole life, it's not something that you like prioritize, you still need to do at least a little bit and not to a resort somewhere. That's not going to teach you about what is different, especially for Canadians and Americans that are like, “I'm gonna go to a different country.”

Like you are not experiencing a different country if you go to a resort. That resort has been catered to you and your comfort level. Go and actually see what the fuck it is like to be buying groceries in a different country and like taking rides on different roads and walking into buildings that have different sized rooms than you’re ...

melissa nelson: Yep. Yep. Oh my god, I drove in England and Ireland. ash alberg: Oh god.
melissa nelson: And ...
ash alberg: How did your brain go? Mine would've exploded.

melissa nelson: Oh my god! I sat constantly and just went, stay to the left, stay to the left, stay. I was just like out loud, every time I would stop, I'd be like, you have to stay to the left. You have to sit ... it just, and even in the rental cars, they know. There was like a big thing, right on the windshield. It was just like, stay to the left!

ash alberg: Yeah. They're like, we know you're gonna have problems with this. It took me like three years after moving back from London to know which direction ... like I started off, I think the first year, I was looking in the wrong direction and every time I would cross the street.

melissa nelson: Yes! Yes!

ash alberg: Then there was two years of looking in both directions ‘cause I couldn't remember which I was supposed to. And it, like three years later I finally started remembering which dir -- and like, I’d only lived there for two years but it took more than that time for me to reorient my brain.

melissa nelson: It's wild. It's wild. When I was driving, we were in rural, like super rural ‘cause that's why we drove ‘cause it was get to places that are hard to get to. And it just the roads are just like so skinny.

ash alberg: They ... yes.

melissa nelson: And it was just like white knuckling it the whole time. My husband's navigating and we're just like my ... I like, I don't know if you do this, but I do this when I'm like really concentrating, I open my eyes really big and I'm just like, sure. I have my eyes like huge, just like the ... [makes panicked sound.]

ash alberg: The only good thing is that there's not that much traffic on those roads. [Laughs.]

melissa nelson: It's so true. It's so true. And then like doing everything because it's kilometers over there and not here and like those, the, we were on some road and it was like a hundred kilometers an hour was the speed limit.

ash alberg: And you're just like ...

melissa nelson: And I'm like, I don't understand what's going on right now. And my husband kept saying, “Just keep it under a hundred baby. Just keep it under a hundred.”

ash alberg: At least the cars actually, like they don't have the miles and kilo-- like Canadian cars have miles and kilometers on them.

melissa nelson: Ours do too on some of them, on some of them.

ash alberg: Annoying.

melissa nelson: Yeah, I.

ash alberg: Convenient like when you cross the border and you're like, okay, I look at the inner circle, right.

melissa nelson: I look at the little numbers now! Yeah, I did that. I spent a lot of my summers in in Western Canada with my dad so that got me ... I just remember every time we would cross the border and I'd see the signs and I was like, it doesn't make sense. It's too fast. What's going on?

And then the first time I actually got to drive and I was like, okay, still confused, but it makes more sense. Little numbers. Got it. [Both chuckle.]

ash alberg: So funny. yeah. I'd always, whenever I go to the States and it's 20 miles an hour, I'm like, what do you, why are we crawling? And then I'm like, oh, we’re in a city, this is ...

[Both talking at the same time.]
melissa nelson: It's not. Yeah. Yeah. Why do we use miles? Why ... ash alberg: I don't know.
melissa nelson: So dumb.

ash alberg: It's true. Yeah. Although I use ... inches make more sense to me than centimeters, but then I switch to kilometers once it gets to like larger chunks.

melissa nelson: Interesting!

ash alberg: Yeah. Yep. It's, I think now kids are taught specifically the metric system, but I was still taught at the time where we also learned the American Imperial system.

melissa nelson: Oh gosh, I'm sorry. [Laughs.]

ash alberg: It's yeah. Actually, you know what? It's not at kilometers. I switch at meters. Yards don't make sense to me, but inches do make sense to me and kilometers make sense to me.

melissa nelson: Yards ... yeah. ash alberg: They ...

melissa nelson: Yeah. It's just what you know, it's what you're used to, whatever you're used to. What we know. And like I remember learn-- I didn't think I learned metric until high school, maybe a while before. And I remember thinking like, I could have done so much better on all those tests.

ash alberg: Yes ‘cause the math actually makes sense. Imperial truly makes no sense.

melissa nelson: No, it's just made up.

ash alberg: Yeah, it was like some random man’s like arm and or foot at some point.

melissa nelson: Yeah. Yeah. It's a foot. Who’s foot? My foot.
ash alberg: Yeah.
melissa nelson: Ah, okay. That's great. Thanks. [Sarcasm.]
ash alberg: That's how we will now measure everything. [Sarcasm.]

melissa nelson: We’ll divide it up though. We'll divide it up. It'll be, mmm, 12 equal measurements. How about 12? 12 work for you? What ... ok? [Ash chuckles.]

ash alberg: Oh man. So this episode is gonna be coming out in the like, I think late spring, early summer, I wanna say June. So what's coming up for you in that chunk of time?

melissa nelson: In June? Luckily, we get a little break in the summer yarn sales move to tourist sales, which are really fun for us. So we get to learn about who visits Portland ‘cause they all come to the shop and that's really fun.

So we don't have a lot of events. Like our event that comes the closest to June is really in September, which is Camp Starlight that we do every year. And I'm just working out details for that right now. And that's the third weekend of September?

ash alberg: Okay.
melissa nelson: So that was really fun. That's outdoor camp, rustic knitting

retreat situation that, this will be its fifth year. ash alberg: Nice.

melissa nelson: We actually did it during COVID, which was interesting and no one got sick and it was great.

ash alberg: I was gonna say, I feel like it's the ideal type of retreat for COVID times, because it is in a rural space. You've got a lot of spacing available, there's you know, like you've got the like ... yurts?

melissa nelson: Yeah we have yurts and sidewalk tents, all of that.

Yeah, no, it was great. The last year when we did it, we had everybody provide proof of vaccination which made everyone that came feel safe, but there's like, you're outside and they’re social distancing and stuff. So that's fine. This year it'll be interesting because we don't have, we just dropped our mask mandate.

So by June who knows what it be? But yeah, we did that. ash alberg: Also a little terrifying.

melissa nelson: So yeah, we did that. We are visiting Canada in September. We're gonna do Knit City in Vancouver.

ash alberg: Nice. That's exciting.
melissa nelson: Yeah. We've only done it once. So we did that in 2019.

ash alberg: Okay. Yeah, before COVID. So how is Knit City ... like for you guys coming across the border to then how ... because as a Canadian trying to get across the border into the States, nightmare. Nightmares.

melissa nelson: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's not fun. It's like a lot of preparation, pretty complex. You have to know exactly the paperwork you have to fill out and you have to ... yeah, we got stopped coming up the last time, but only because I just had one name missing on something.

So hopefully I'll be able to figure out this time. Coming back into the U.S. was like, I'm like, I could have brought anything. I could have had people. [Ash cackles.]

I was like, you don't care at all, do you? And maybe it was because I was a U.S. citizen or something at the time.

ash alberg: It definitely was.
melissa nelson: I don't know if it's different now, but they literally ... ash alberg: I’ve crossed at that ...
melissa nelson: I had a moving van ...

ash alberg: ... and they just didn't give a shit.
melissa nelson: And they were just like, I was like, oh, I'm supposed to give

you this paperwork for when I came into the country with all of the, whatever. And the guy was just like, I don't care. He was like, go ahead.

ash alberg: That is, it is definitely ‘cause you're an American citizen ‘cause I have crossed at that land crossing and the guys are assholes. [Chuckles.]

melissa nelson: Yeah, it was, they definitely thought they were had more power than they probably actually have, but, it's like the American side, ‘cause I had to get a piece of paper from the American side and then go back over to the Canadian, like crossing.

ash alberg: Oh my god.

melissa nelson: When I was going up.

ash alberg: Yeah.

melissa nelson: And there's a, I think there's like a taxidermied eagle or something?

ash alberg: Yes, there is! [Both laugh.]

melissa nelson: I was just like, where am I? This is a horrible representation of the States, but okay. It was like dusty and everything was brown and just, oh god, you could’ve taken like a minute, just a minute to be like, yay, our neighbors! I don't know.

Yeah, no, they weren't kind at all. They, I was trying to kill 'em with kindness. I was all smiley and eee. And they just, no, they really don't care. But once we got over, everyone was lovely.

ash alberg: That's good. [Chuckles.]

melissa nelson: I got to go to Tim Horton's. I got to, I love Vancouver. I love British Columbia. Like I said, it's like, it was one state away from me. So it's like a seven hour drive from here.

ash alberg: Yeah, it's pretty reasonable. Yeah.

melissa nelson: It’s a pretty easy vacation destination for us. Yeah. So looking forward to going back and talking with all the lovely Canadians and their lovely accents, it's great.

Yeah, it was interesting to see how many people were like, oh, I can't cross the border. And I was like, what could you have possibly done to not be able to cross the border?

ash alberg: I, like the last time that I crossed at that crossing, I was threatened by the border guard that we would be blocked. I was going across with a friend and to meet up with Alexa, from Tin Can Knits, and Emily. And we were gonna go shopping at Tolt and we had taken two different cars and our car got stopped and the guy was an asshole and was threatening to ban us for 10 years.

melissa nelson: What?!
ash alberg: So at this point I would still be like a couple years away from being

able to cross again, technically. melissa nelson: For what?!

ash alberg: For literally no reason. And it wasn't until like we gave him our phones and he went into my private Instagram messages, which was how he ... because he was convinced that we were going down to sell and we're like, no, we're going down to shop. You happen to have a destination yarn store two hours south of here.

melissa nelson: Yeah.
ash alberg: That's where we're going. And it wasn't until he read my personal

message, which were like multiple messages down. melissa nelson: Uhhuhhh.

ash alberg: So he'd gone scrolling for a while. And in that conversation, we were chatting about the logistics of, okay, what time are we gonna leave? Meet you at Tolt, okay. And then we'll do lunch down there. Perfect. We'll come home.

And it wasn't until he saw that, but then he eased up and then he became polite and I was like, nope, you have lost ... like this too little too late, buddy. You were a dick the whole way through. [Melissa groans.] I'm not gonna pretend that you're nice now. [Chuckles.]

melissa nelson: That is awful. When I was like 21, I did a, like a really big trip. Started in Chicago, went up through Detroit and did you know, Toronto and over. And when we were crossing ...

ash alberg: Yeah.
melissa nelson: ... at Windsor and our car, we were doing like an open-ended

camping road trip.
ash alberg: Okay. Yeah.
melissa nelson: So our car was full of like camping stuff.
ash alberg: Yep.
melissa nelson: And they were like, pull over.
ash alberg: Yeah. They're like, you're trying to move to this country.

melissa nelson: Exactly. It's like, are you gonna, are you trying to move here? I was like, no, we're camping. We're just, we're going, we're going up. We're coming back down. We're gonna do the whole east coast. And he was like, prove it. And so at the time I didn't have a cell phone. Didn't have cell phones yet.

ash alberg: Yeah.

melissa nelson: I pulled out all of my like hostel guides. I had like six hostel guides for all the different regions. And I was like, why would I have these? And they were like, okay.

I was just like ...

ash alberg: It's just, it's wild to me. Like just the ... and yes, for the people that are like trying to do shitty stuff ...

melissa nelson: Sure. Yeah.

ash alberg: Fine, whatever. But like also inevitably those people tend to be the ones that ... like the corporations are the ones that they should actually be caring about.

But I remember a similar situation going to the UK. Like I found that the U.S. and the UK have the worst border ... and by that, like the, just the like most aggressive right from like out the gate, no matter what.

melissa nelson: Yeah. When we into, what was it? I wanna say ... yeah. When we went into Heathrow.

ash alberg: Yes.

melissa nelson: And we were going through that with my little kids.

ash alberg: Yep.

melissa nelson: And it's we're very obviously just like a family vacationing and it was like 20 questions.

ash alberg: Yes.

melissa nelson: I was like ...

ash alberg: Yep.

melissa nelson: What could you possibly think I would be up to that would be nefarious?

ash alberg: Exactly.
melissa nelson: Like, look at us.

ash alberg: I remember having a guard ... and it's, you've got such jet lag at that point because there're like so many, I'm like, it is 3:00 AM to my body right now. I have not had coffee. Whatever coffee I might have had was sludge. And now, and like I'm in a country that I ever been here before.

We need SIM cards that are different. So it was a time where cell phones were like a thing, but like not enough of a thing that you could actually be like ...

melissa nelson: You just use your phone. Yeah.
ash alberg: ... travelling internationally with it. And so I had no way ... it was

literally because I happened to have my return ticket printed out that he ... melissa nelson: Oh my god.
ash alberg: ... let me through.

And I was so like, like I'm not trying to come into your country to just ... and especially now, because I've lived in London and have made the decision to not live in London, but I go back, it's no, I really don't want to live in your country.

melissa nelson: I don't wanna live here. Trust me. Yeah.
ash alberg: So funny.
melissa nelson: Oh my god.
ash alberg: Oh man. But Camp Starlight sounds like it will be exciting. melissa nelson: Yeah. Always a good time.

ash alberg: Yeah. For folks who are up for traveling and hopefully by that point ... I keep on hearing like in Europe right now they've got like the subvariant of Omicron is like ramping things back up. I'm like, okay, fingers crossed that we don't end up in a similar situation.

melissa nelson: Yeah, fingers crossed. We just got hit so horribly with the regular Omicron that we're all immune at this point ‘cause ...

ash alberg: Exactly, and that like between vaccinations and like hopefully enough people up here, people are still wearing masks mostly. Hopefully between those things, then we'll be able to safely-ish navigate things.

I think that's the thing, right, is that this is our new normal and so it's just a matter of figuring out okay, if this is our new normal, then how do we mitigate the risk in order to be able to move around safely enough that we are keeping

ourselves and the people that we love and the people that we are interacting with also safe?

melissa nelson: Yeah. I think it's gonna be back to the same sort of misk ... risk mitigation or not that many people had chosen before, where we had tens of thousands of deaths from the flu and all that kind of thing.

ash alberg: Yeah. Yes.

melissa nelson: I think that'll get ... we'll figure it out and some people will just get sick sometimes and some people will just die sometimes. And that's the way it's gonna be. But it will be nice when it's not in a place where people who can't control their environment are still vulnerable.

ash alberg: Yes. Yeah, exactly. I think that's a thing that has been so frustrating about the way that COVID has been handled, especially in like our two countries where it's like, we never got enough control of the situation through herd immunity with vaccinations that we were able to figure out, okay, what are the ... what are ways that we now figure out for the immunocompromised folks who can't be vaccinated, what we are doing in order to make the world still accessible to them?

Like we never got to that point and now we've just been like, okay, we're like far enough ahead-ish that we'll just go back to where we were at before and hope that the hospital systems don't get overwhelmed and that if you're super immunocompromised that maybe you'll move about the world. Maybe you won't.

And it's like, that's not really fair

melissa nelson: That's not fair at all. I have a very immune compromised employee and that's been my sort of point of attention for a lot of this. And he did get very sick after being vaccinated because the vaccine did nothing for him.

ash alberg: [Sighs.] That's brutal.

melissa nelson: He's a transplant recipient and he was on immunosuppressant drugs. We were very concerned about him. And he was really sick for a while. And got it from an unvaccinated friend and ...

ash alberg: So frustrating.

melissa nelson: So avoidable.
ash alberg: Yeah. Yes.
melissa nelson: But that friend chose not to tell him they were unvaccinated.

ash alberg: See, shit like that is just I'm like ... [sighs.] I don't know, especially I've got my, there's my parents. And then like my adoptive grandparents are both in their nineties and even if I'm not seeing them as frequently, like my mom is regularly going and doing things for them.

And so I'm like, I don't wanna be in a situation where I put any of them at risk. Like my parents are almost in their seventies.

melissa nelson: Yeah.

ash alberg: My grandparents are in their nineties. I don't want to be the person ... Like the rest of my bubble is primarily like younger, healthier and we know that with this virus that didn't necessarily mean anything, but there was some kind of feeling of okay, if any of us get sick, we are less likely to have significant impact but that doesn't mean that the rest of the people in our lives, whether it's like young children or older or immunocompromised, like they’re ... I think that's part of it is that if you were somebody who was healthy and younger had a decent immune system, it's still not just about you.

And I think maybe that's what we need to keep coming around to just generally with all this shit, is that it's not only about you. There is collective community care that, you can figure out like what feels good for your life and also figure out how do you balance that with community care?

melissa nelson: I think that's a lesson that we've ... some of us have learned also. Wait, I guess getting a flu shot wasn't just for me.

ash alberg: Yeah. Yes.

melissa nelson: I think a lot of people came to that realization because it just, the messaging wasn't really out there, we weren't really understanding or internalizing that like, oh, I don't need a flu shot because I'm healthy.

ash alberg: Yeah. And not thinking ...

melissa nelson: And things like that. And okay, it's reframed a lot of that for a lot of people and maybe that will do some good. Hopefully it'll stick for a while. But it also revealed some people who really don't give a shit about other people.

That's that was also, I have lost a couple of acquaintance type friends where I'm like, whoa, I didn't realize you felt this way and I don't need to have you in my life, and that's unfortunate, but I'm like, I really don’t care.

ash alberg: Yeah. I think that's been ... yeah it's interesting. And it'll be interesting as we continue moving forward, of the grief and the PTSD attached to this chunk of time is significant. And the rifts that it caused within family and social networks were significant.

And we haven't really had time to reconcile them yet. There were a lot of relationships that, prior to COVID, it was like, okay, you're like a little kookier. We've got some difference in values. And then the last few years it's actually, no, like there's, there are some limits.

melissa nelson: Yeah. With, with Trump and with COVID it, some people jumped on bandwagons that were unexpected, where they were reasonable at one point in their lives. And then they were like, no, I need to believe these things. I need to, I need this other reality.

ash alberg: Yep.
melissa nelson: And I had compassion for it for a while.
ash alberg: Yeah.
melissa nelson: Before I realized that they're just not accepting reality and ...

ash alberg: I think that’s the thing, right? It's like, there's compassion initially because there's also the belief or the hope that this is just a small portion and that ultimately there's still goodness that can come through.

melissa nelson: Yeah.

ash alberg: And then it does hit like a tipping point of oh no, you truly are choosing to stay this selfish. And I actually, I, I don't need to make space for this anymore. Like you have actually proven ... it's like, right now with the rallies in support of Ukraine and then in literally the exact same location, there are people still doing anti-mask rallies and it's wow, okay.

You have the like separation in reality right now is just ... it's almost impressive in like the mental acrobatics that are happening.

melissa nelson: Yeah, yes.

ash alberg: But like also there, there are actual consequences as a result of that.

melissa nelson: Yeah. The cognitive dissonance is real. It's real. And it's, I've been examining my own, like what facts am I seeking out? Confirmation bias, right? What facts am I seeking out to confirm my beliefs? Or what facts am I straight up making up?

Because I, maybe I do that. I don't know. So I've been like really examining, like, why am I digging in on this when someone's pushing back? What is it? Why do I feel like I need to be right here? Realizing how extreme some people have gotten, like I imagine your gas prices are high. Is that ...?

ash alberg: Highest they've ever been.
melissa nelson: So do ... are Canadians blaming Joe Biden for that? It's like ...

ash alberg: I don't think so. I'm sure that there are some, but I'm pretty sure that the general messaging in Canada is that the reason that the prices are nuts is because of Russia.

melissa nelson: Right.
ash alberg: Which is also, when we think about it okay, yes, for sure. That's

having an impact because of how much we have relied on imported oil.

And also let's look at the way that like, the energy sector has for decades known that our reliance on fossil fuels is damaging and that there is a limit to it and that it does cause and encourage like world conflicts and that we should be shifting our focus over to these other energy sources.

And so it's, it like, we can blame a thing and also we need to look at what other possible things are at fault here. And we can't necessarily change any of those right now, but like moving forward, what do we do about it?

melissa nelson: Yeah. Hopefully that's a lesson that we'll learn sometime. Unfortunately our memories are short.

ash alberg: Oh yeah.

melissa nelson: But maybe from this, we'll be like, oh wait, what happens in other countries can affect us, even if we wish it didn't. Even if we are minimally involved. So how do we ... like if you're really putting your own country first what does that really mean?

ash alberg: Yeah.

melissa nelson: What does it really mean? And if you really wanna, you know, become self-sufficient, you can become self sufficient in a way that isn't damaging to others.

ash alberg: Absolutely. And that there's ways of being self-sufficient that don't involve, like going so far down the rabbit hole that you remove yourself entirely from society either. There's like, that's one thing recently that I've been thinking to myself, I'm like, oh my god, I'm done with humans.

I just wanna live on the land elsewhere. And and then I think to myself, nope, this is exactly the problem is that then you become the crazy cult person.

melissa nelson: Yep. Yep. I've seen it happen. [Both laugh.]

ash alberg: Oh man. That's a fun place to end our conversation. [Melissa laughs.] I'm trying to think of like, how do we like bring this around to a slightly happier note?

melissa nelson: We'll talk, we can talk about cults another time. Knitting is a cult. Some people think we worship the fiber gods. I don't really know.

ash alberg: It's honestly though, like running businesses and like online, like having online presences, I'm like we're all a bunch of mini cults is really what it comes down to.

melissa nelson: I'm a believer in some of that. Cult psychology is like much more prevalent than we think. [Laughs.] So the things that we can be like, talked into believing and the things that we will follow, like you see it with crazy like yarn releases and things like that, where it's I need to have that. Everyone is doing that. I have to have it.

And you're just like, what? Why do you have to have that?

ash alberg: Yeah, exactly. Are you going to die without it? This is the one thing that I keep on, like reminding myself and also trying to make a point of reminding my customers is I am very happy to offer these things for you. I believe in them. I believe in their value and there's so much goodness that comes from building a small business based on value.

And also you're not gonna die if you don't buy yarn from me. I won't die.

melissa nelson: That’s my whole philosophy of my business. It's just yarn, that's it. [Laughs.]

ash alberg: And yes, it's beautiful and we love it. And also, at the end of the day ...

melissa nelson: Just yarn. Not life and death. It's all good. [Both giggle.] ash alberg: Yeah. Maybe that's a good spot.
melissa nelson: There you go.
ash alberg: Turn us around. This has been delightful, Melissa. Thank you.

We will make sure that people have links to the shop and to your Instagram and so that people can sign up for Camp Starlight if they wanna come and join you ‘cause that'll be fun.

melissa nelson: It’ll be on the website.
ash alberg: Yyeaah. And, but yeah. Thank you for this. This has been lovely. melissa nelson: Thank you so much, Ash. Thanks for inviting me.

ash alberg: [Upbeat music plays.] You can find full episode recordings and transcripts at snortandcackle.com. Just click on podcast in the main menu. Follow Snort and Cackle on Instagram @snortandcackle and join our seasonal book club with @SnortandCackleBookClub. Don't forget to subscribe and review the podcast by your favorite podcasting platform.

Editing provided by Noah Gilroy, recording and mixing by Ash Alberg, music by Yesable.