season 1, episode 4 - post-christian paganism & textiles with kalea turner-beckman

our guest for episode 4 is kalea turner-beckman! kalea is a textile maker and natural dyer living on treaty 6 territory in edmonton. as a self proclaimed luddite, kalea owns a local yarn brand, producing yarns from sheep to skein that are dyed using home grown dye plants, kitchen and garden waste, and foraged weeds.

in addition to the witchy vibes coming off her spinning wheels and dye pots, kalea combines the seasonality of natural textile production with earth based spirituality, locating her creative practice at the intersection of cultural identity, decolonization, and post-christian paganism. you can find her online at kaleatheluddite.ca and on instagram @kaleatheluddite.

watch the episodes about mini mills and custom woolen mills over at from field to skin.

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 witchcraft in early modern poland 1500-1800 by wanda wyporska.

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!

seasons 1-3 of snort & cackle are generously supported by the manitoba arts council.

transcript

ash alberg: [Upbeat music plays in the background.] Hello, and welcome to the Snort and Cackle podcast. I'm your host Ash Alberg. I'm a queer fibre witch and hedge witch, and each week I interview a fellow boss witch to discuss how everyday magic helps them make their life and the wider world a better place.

Expect serious discussions about intersections of privilege and oppression, big C versus small C capitalism, rituals, sustainability, astrology, ancestral work, and a whole lot of snorts and cackles. 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 Witchcraft in Early Modern Poland, 1500-1800 by Wanda Wyporska.

I am here today with Kalea, one of my very good friends and my doppelganger. Kalea Turner-Beckman is a textile maker and natural dyer living on Treaty Six territory in Edmonton as a self-proclaimed Luddite, Kalea owns a local yarn brand producing yarns from sheep to skein that are dyed using homegrown dye plants, kitchen and garden waste, and foraged weeds.

In addition to the witchy vibes coming off of her spinning wheel and dye pots Kalea combines with seasonality of natural textile production with earth-based spirituality, locating her creative practice at the intersection of cultural identity decolonization and post-Christian paganism.

I would also like to point out that Kalea is truly my doppleganger [laughs] and we have basically the same biz and it is wonderful and makes me really happy and is just delightful because it makes navigating annoyances within my own biz a lot easier when I can be like KALEA and you know exactly what the fuck I'm talking about. So that’s nice. So welcome!

kalea turner-beckman: [Chuckles.] Thanks for having me. This is really fun.

ash alberg: Yay. I'm so glad. I'm so excited to have this conversation with you. Yeah. And also, yeah, we like have the same business and also you source some of my yarns for me/we are actively working on you sourcing more of my yarns for me, which is very exciting ‘cause your skillset is ... we do a lot of things the same, but you also have the additional skillset of like really knowing what the fuck you're doing when it comes to sourcing fleeces and understanding breed differences, and like qualities of fleeces cause you’ve actually trained in it.

And I am very grateful that you have trained in it because it means that I don't have to anytime soon. Probably I will at some point because it's very nerdy and fun. But I'm glad that in that meantime you already have this skill set, so I can just pay you to do it. [Laughs.]

[Kalea giggles quietly.]

kalea turner-beckman: Thank you. I feel like our skills complement each other really well. We basically have the same business, except you have a lot more experience in like the

pattern design world and understanding the knitting industry. And I have the sheepy fleece skills and together we're a power couple.

ash alberg: [Laughs.] It's true. We are a power couple. [Snorts.] Oh, I love it so much. Okay. So let's launch into the actual questions so that we don't ... we have a tendency of having very long chats and we start talking, we're like, I'm, we're done. We have to go and do these things. And then we find another topic and we just keep going.

Then it's three hours later. We're like, oh shit.

kalea turner-beckman: So much for getting work done today.

ash alberg: I think that our talks are very useful for our businesses.

kalea turner-beckman: I think it is work. It's legit work.

ash alberg: Exactly. Although I do have dye pots on, so I should keep my brain on that. Okay. Tell us a bit about you and what you do in the world.

kalea turner-beckman: You touched on it already, but I run a local yarn brand here in Alberta. I am super passionate about disrupting the stupid wool industry. [Ash snickers.] The exploitative ways that we rip farmers off and treat animals poorly and then ship materials to China to be covered in plastic is crazy to me.

So I do it differently. I connect with, directly with, the local farms and meet the sheep and the humans and their small businesses who are really making a difference on the land. And I buy raw wool directly from them and pay them fairly for it. And then I skirt all of the wool myself and grade it and decide what yarn or roving it wants to be.

And I send it off to local mills where it gets fun. And when it comes back to me, I dye it in my home dye studio and then ship it out to my customers.

ash alberg: I love it. That's so good.

And I also like the ... there's like its own special magic in just like listening to the wool and like knowing what it wants to become just by getting to know it. And you becoming very intimately familiar with it as you go through the skirting process.

kalea turner-beckman: Yeah.

In while doing this business, I realized that was really like the missing link. There are other people selling local ... there are lots of local dyers. There are lots of farmers producing wool, but there's no one connecting the wool to the textile makers. And it's a pretty specialized skillset that only really exists in the handspinner world to like really understand all of the different characteristics of the different sheep breeds and what that wool can become and what it's good for.

And so I realized quickly that could be my niche, that was where I was most needed in the supply chain. And so I, I started taking the master spinner program at Olds College which is

an agricultural college in Alberta that I was not really aware of growing up in Alberta until a few years ago.

And they have a fantastic master hand spinner and master weaver program, which is pretty special. In North America at least, people come from all over Canada and all over the states to take the program in the summers. It's been canceled because of COVID for the last couple of years, which sucks. [Ash groans in the background.] But the first level just focused on sheep breeds and that really solidified my skills with that.

And this year I'm taking level two through a distance learning option that they've put together because of the pandemic. And this year we'll focus on alpaca and mohair. So I'm super excited to look at other like exotic blends of fibers going forward.

ash alberg: Exotic blends of fibers that grow in the Prairies and ... [Laughs.]
kalea turner-beckman: [Chuckles.] Yeah. It's weird in the fiber industry, we call alpacas and

mohair exotics, but ...

ash alberg: There literally, there are so many alpaca farms in Manitoba. Oh my god. Like...

kalea turner-beckman: There’s a lot of alpaca in the prairies.

ash alberg: It’s intense. Also alpacas are assholes, which is pretty funny, but so are rams, so it all makes sense.

kalea turner-beckman: Yeah. Anyway, I found out quickly that was the most useful place for me to focus on developing my skills. And I've also grown to love it a lot. Like it's, it is magical. You don't think of this, like standing in a pile of dirty sheep fleeces as something that would be enjoyable, but I love the spring work that happens in my business.

Just like hanging out outside all day, shoving my hands in bags of dirty sheep fleeces and looking at all of the characteristics of the fiber and seeing the luster and the crimp and the different natural colors that come out of the sheep and like really listening to the fiber and figuring out what it wants to be.

ash alberg: Oh, I love all of that. Okay. So there were two things in there that I want us to touch on. One of which is the seasonality. Like your whole business and as a result, my business as well ... but I think also on the consumer end, what is frequently not recognized and acknowledged it in our industry is how attached to seasonality it is.

Like in particular, when we're dealing with more specific breeds rather than the meat flocks; they are maintained year round. A lot of them live in barns. And so you can remove ... there's still, it's a natural product. It's an agricultural product realistically, but you can semi-remove the reliance on just like how very seasonal it is.

And it's really a one-year process. When you are dealing with the meat flocks that ... their breeding happens at a slightly more frequent pace. And the shearing happens more than once a year, sometimes depending on what their breeding and use are like. And also of course what breeds they're working with, but much of it is very much attached to ... you are

looking at the full wheel of the year and at different points of the year, the work becomes very different. And there are also like rest points, where it's okay, I've done my thing. Now I'm just waiting on the mill to send stuff back.

And then once it comes back from the mill, now we shift and then both of us add in our natural dyeing on top of that. And so there's like different kind of like internal clocks and calendars that you are following with nature in terms of like, when are the sheep being born? When is shearing happening?

When is ... when are we skirting? When are we then shipping things to the mill? And then there's overlap with the calendars of okay, and now it's harvest season, and some of our harvest we need to dye with right away and other things we can save, but we're harvesting throughout the season and like keeping an eye on what is ... what's blooming when, and has this season’s, or this year's, growing conditions altered when our usual harvesting time comes.

[Kalea giggles.]

And like, all of that is ... I really love it because it feels very much tied into hedge witchery and kitchen witchery and green witchery and all of that. And then the other thing that now I’ve lost in my brain ... Oh! Is your skillset, which is, I think, something that also needs to be brought in ... more into conversation in our industry.

There's, especially in North America and specifically U.S. and Canada, there's a lot of work that is being done by farmers and by dyers who are working with local or more locally sourced yarns. And not only specifically that you're working with a Canadian mill, there are Canadian mills in Ontario that do not touch a single fiber of Canadian fiber. Like they, they import stuff from all over. It might actually like some of their stuff might actually technically have started in Canada and is one of the things that then got shipped ... like I think is the ratio right, is still 90% of ...

kalea turner-beckman: ... and likely got shipped to China where it was processed ash alberg: ... the grade is still ...
[Both talking at the same time.]
kalea turner-beckman: and dyed and then ...

ash alberg: [00:09:53] Exactly.
kalea turner-beckman: ... shipped back.

ash alberg: Exactly. And then they're like, okay, we now have the dyed, chemically stripped, wasn't graded because that's just not where the value goes ... Like it, it is like bananas to me the way that, you know ... and I saw this in Iceland too, where Lopi is ... they have kept in order for their own profit margins to stay profitable as things have changed. Which is ... Specifically the Alafoss mill, not the mini mill that is now also in Iceland and is hopefully changing the game a little bit.

But in order for Alafoss to stay profitable, then they stopped ... And I don't know if they ever did, but they don't care now, at least, about the quality of the wool that is being dropped off. And as a result of that, the farmers don't necessarily care because they're not going to get paid differently for having better fleeces.

And it does take more work. It does take more consideration. And so why are you gonna prioritize that? But then, the downside trickle effect of it is that we, there's just, oh, it's such a big ripple. I'm just not even going ...

kalea turner-beckman: Oh, there’s ...

ash alberg: ... to go into it because my brain got completely overwhelmed ...

kalea turner-beckman: There is so much that you just brought up there!

ash alberg: But, oh, sorry. I wanted to, I didn't actually make my point. This is our problem when we have conversations [Laughs.]

kalea turner-beckman: Okay, make your point and then I'll give you all my answers. [Laughs.] [Both speaking at the same time.]

ash alberg: ... which is that your skillset specifically is not only knowing and understanding breeds and how they differ and what they are best used for in general. I think this is the thing that is missing in particular in Canada and the U.S. right now, is that as we have tried to shift the consumer base, the general consumer base, to caring again about locally sourced wool and understanding, like, why do we use one breed for one thing, why do we use a certain type of yarn for one garment and not for another garment, like understanding that all wool has a purpose.

And for the yarn or for the wool that does end up in specifically the yarn chain, not in like carpets or insulation or whatever, that those also then have different purposes in and of themselves, but it's still not nuanced enough for the general consumer to understand that it's not just about a specific breed. Just because you buy BFL sock yarn does not mean that it's necessarily going to be any stronger than a superwash merino sock yarn in which... like we know superwash merino is literally the worst fucking thing that you can put on your feet.

[Kalea laughs dryly.]

But in particular merino in general, as a breed, is a poor choice for a sock yarn. And because of the combination of being a shorter staple length, and being a very soft, not durable fiber, the combination of those two things is terrible for socks! But that doesn't necessarily mean that you couldn't end up with potentially a merino cross who has a really lovely, soft to the touch fiber that is still a durable fiber and maybe has a longer staple length like the we're both ...

kalea turner-beckman: ... and a lot of the long wool breeds have if you look at micron count, they're coarser than the fine soft wools like merino ...

ash alberg: Yes. Yep.
kalea turner-beckman: ... but they're so shiny and lustrous that they feel silky and soft ... ash alberg: Yes, exactly!

kalea turner-beckman: ... which is exactly what you want for socks. That same thing happens with mohair that the luster in the fiber makes it feel soft, even though it's a coarser fiber.

ash alberg: Exactly. But, and so that's the thing, right? Is that we both have a very deep love for sock yarn, all-natural sock yarn. It's like we truly are doppelgangers. [Chuckles.] But as a result of that, like one of the things that I particularly love about our relationship is that like it is hard, on the prairies, to find particularly large flocks of breeds specifically that you would say, yes, this will make a good sock yarn. And for me, where I wholesale so much, I like, it's just, we have come to the determination that right now, it's not possible for me to wholesale sock yarn anyway, because a good sock yarn does need to be spun on mini mill equipment to get the strength that it needs which is different.

And I'll stick links into the show notes of like where people can go and see ... Aww man, it's going to be a long nerdy conversation.

[Both laugh.]

But I'm so excited right now. You can’t see me pumping my arms. But like I'll put it in show notes, the links that you can see the difference between how the older traditional milling equipment with Custom, which is the mill that we both use and work with on a regular basis and is wonderful, they use mule spinner and other turn of the 20th century equipment versus the mini mill equipment.

Which, we also work with different mini-mills and also the same mini mill. And so just the way that the spinning happens drastically changes the end result of the yarn, and specifically for a good durable sock yarn that doesn't need extra shit added to it in order to be a durable sock yarn, we're looking at mini mills, but the mini-mills ... their capability, even just ... it can be running so perfectly smoothly, no hiccups at all, which is ... that doesn't happen. [Kalea giggles.] But even if it did, their literal capability and the speed at which they spin is just not ... it financially is not viable for them to be spinning the kind of quantities that I need on my end at a speed that makes it pricing-wise, works out wholesale-wise.

And then, when you and I work on stuff like you do all of the sourcing, you do all of the skirting at this point, at some point post COVID I'll be able to come out to help with the skirting, but like your knowledge and your connections with the farmers, I pay you for that because I don't have those things. So then we add in all of these extra layers. If you were to then add on top of that, a wholesale thing, like I just, I would never sell sock yarn.

kalea turner-beckman: Yeah, they're just ...
ash alberg: The socks would need to cost a hundred dollars a pair.

kalea turner-beckman: Yeah. The mini mills just don't have the kind of scale to be able to offer a price for their processing that allows for enough markup for us to include a wholesale rate. It just ...

ash alberg: Which is fine ...
kalea turner-beckman: that’s just the reality of where the spinning industry is ... ash alberg: Right now.
kalea turner-beckman: ... in the prairies right now.

ash alberg: Yeah, exactly. Which is fine though, because it's allowing us to play around a little bit more with like smaller batch sock yarns. If you find, like you did, a mama and a baby that they make adorable fleeces, you can get like a couple dozen skeins of really lovely sock yarn that is then just ... is it enough to wholesale? No. But is it going to make a couple dozen people really nice pairs of socks, a hundred percent!

So like you add that in and it's, there's a lot more, I think, play and freedom that comes as a result of the restriction of not being able to do the more commercial side of it, which I love.

kalea turner-beckman: The price is restrictive for the processing, but the bonus is that these mini mills can do really tiny batches.

ash alberg: Yes!
kalea turner-beckman: So if I find just like a couple fleeces that would make a perfect sock

yarn, I can do that. I don't have to save up enough to do a minimum run at the bigger mill. ash alberg: Exactly.

kalea turner-beckman: And it also allows me to play around with like experimenting with different fibers and testing out, does this make good socks? There's so much theory that we can put into it. And at the end of the day, sometimes you just need to knit the pair of socks and put it on your feet and see how long it lasts.

ash alberg: Yep, exactly. And the thing too that then becomes really cool with it is that because you are working with potentially only one or two fleeces ... like just because you find an entire flock of Corriedale does not mean that those Corriedale are actually going ... like Corriedale is a really lovely sock yarn and you can make a beautiful a hundred percent, no superwash Corriedale sock yarn and it'll be a really good sock yarn. That being said, each individual sheep in that flock has different health, has different qualities to their fleeces, and, even if you have a sheep that normally produces a really beautiful fleece, if you have a shitty winter and it has a break in its nutrition, as far as they couldn't get high enough quality hay for a chunk of time and so now there's a break in the fleece midway through the growing season.

There's all of these things that the consumer, the general consumer doesn't know about it ... doesn't necessarily need to know about, but it does absolutely impact us. And I think

because like, on the one hand it again, it can be restrictive. On the other hand, it's a great thing for you and I specifically, as far as being able to be constantly educating and teaching our audiences about you don't need to just get stuck on a specific brand or a specific fleece, like you can ... Yes, we know that there are certain breeds that are just not going to make a good sock yarn, that is a thing.

However, if you know enough about what does make a good sock yarn, as far as quality, then you can find a mixed-breed sheep that makes the most perfect sock yarn that you have ever seen. Can you claim that it is a breed-specific sock yarn? No, you cannot. But does that mean that it is now a lesser sock yarn also? No, it does not. Like it's ...

kalea turner-beckman: Yeah.
ash alberg: Yeah.
kalea turner-beckman: Yeah. Okay. ash alberg: Sorry.

kalea turner-beckman: No, I'm going to unpack a bit of what just happened there. [Ash cackles.] So let's go back ...

ash alberg: [Laughs.] Far back!
kalea turner-beckman: ... A couple of steps to, to the seasonality ... [Willow barks.]
Hi, Willow! [Giggles.]

... To the seasonality of this work that capitalism has done a really great job of lulling people into this idea that you can just get whatever you want whenever you want it. And we're so disconnected from where our products come from that we forget that wool is an agricultural product

ash alberg: Yes. A hundred percent.
kalea turner-beckman: Like, knitters do not think of the yarn that they're going to the yarn

store to buy as an agricultural product. ash alberg: Yep.

kalea turner-beckman: Like we don't think of it being connected to the land and to the seasons and to the weather and ...

ash alberg: Yep.

kalea turner-beckman: ... we just, we don't think about it. So doing this work seasonally and connecting directly with the farms allows me to understand that like deep connection, which makes everything more meaningful to me, but also helps me choose the fiber that like ... like

what you said about, if you have a really bad year, the quality of the fiber is going to be affected.

And that happened a couple of years ago here in Alberta, there was a major hay shortage because it rained the entire summer. And so there was never a good time to bale hay ‘cause it was just always raining and when people did get it baled, it was wet and it went moldy inside. So halfway through the winter, everyone got to the middle of their bales and it was all moldy ...

ash alberg: Oh my god.

kalea turner-beckman: And there was just not enough hay. And so people like farmers were shipping hay in from the States, and then they were getting shitty hay from the States, and like flocks of sheep were getting worms. And it was just ...

ash alberg: Ooohh my god.

kalea turner-beckman: ... awful. People were spending thousands of dollars on shipping terrible hay from the States because there just wasn't enough hay here. It was a crazy year. And with worms, like even if you noticed that the sheep have worms and you treat them immediately, there's still a stress break from that one day where all the sheep were sick. Like you can ruin the whole year of wool just from one sick day. [Strained laugh.] Even if the farmers are like super on top of it and take care of their sheep perfectly.

ash alberg: There's like literally no room for error.

kalea turner-beckman: There's ... No. There's ... not with that.

ash alberg: Yep.

kalea turner-beckman: Nope. One super stressful day in a sheep's life over the winter. And there can be a stress break in the fiber and ...

ash alberg: My God. [Kalea laughs.] And anybody who lives in the prairies or has ever lived in the prairies or has visited us in the middle of the winter knows that it is a perpetual stress break.

kalea turner-beckman: Yeah.
[Both laugh.]
ash alberg: Minus 30 aaall yeear loong, yeaah. [Sarcastic enthusiasm.]

kalea turner-beckman: Yeah. Yeah. And shearing season is also really funny here with the weather because of when lambing happens, like our winters stretch so far into the spring that there's this crazy dance that happens on farms where some farmers like to get shearing done before lambing starts, which is less chaotic and, and cleaner because then you're having sheep birthing without all of their big fleece in the way.

But most years it's still snowing into May and there's just ...

ash alberg: Yes. You can’t!
kalea turner-beckman: ... they don't get it done. And then lambing starts and then they

have to wait until lambing is over and then you're shearing in June. [Both laugh.]
ash alberg: Yes. Yeah, exactly.

kalea turner-beckman: Or you need extra helpers to come out, if you're doing shearing, while lambing is happening, ‘cause a sheep can just give birth while you're shearing it. Or there was one year when I took my partner, Yaroslav, out with me to a shearing day and his job was to hold the baby lambs while their moms were getting sheared. [Ash aww’s in the background.]

ash alberg: Oh my god, yes!

kalea turner-beckman: ‘Cause like when you separate the one day old lamb from the mom, they all of them, like the mothers are like, “What are you doing? You can't steal my baby!” And the babies are like, “Mom! Mom! Mom!” So Yaroslav was ...

ash alberg: Literally making that sound too!
kalea turner-beckman: Yeah. So Yaroslav was wearing a sweater that I had knit out of wool

from that flock the previous year.

ash alberg: Oh my god, so smart!

kalea turner-beckman: And so he just, he would just pick up the little babies and they would like nestle into his sweater that smelled like their mom. [Ash awwws in the background.] And they would go to sleep in his arms while they were ... while their moms were getting sheared.

It was the cutest thing ever, but like ...

ash alberg: We also need to take a quick break to just acknowledge that Yaroslav in general is like the calmest, most wonderful human ever. And so this does not surprise me because if I was that baby lamb, I would also just fall asleep in Yaroslav’s arms.

[Both giggle.]

kalea turner-beckman: Yeah. Being able to be connected with the farms in that way and having these stories to tell just makes the yarn feel so magical and so much more meaningful.

ash alberg: Mhmm. Ahh. Yes. I love that so much. I was just about to say, what else did I say that now that probably you want to respond to?

[Both laugh.]

We talked about sock yarn, we talked about the, yeah, capitalism just really does a doozy on just our general concept of like time and connection. One thing that I am really valuing ... and you and I are going to have a separate non-podcast chat soon, just FYI. I don't think that we actually have one on the books. But just the way that I am now thinking about how the biz grows moving forward. And the fact that I ... the cap that I had initially put on it where it was like, yeah, that's enough was like, actually, no, it's not enough because my initial idea of what is enough is restrictive.

As far as the freedom that it then gives me to adjust my days and live my life according to ... literally according to the seasons. Like yesterday, I'm so grateful and fortunate to be at the stage now with my business where the money just does keep coming in. And it is an ongoing trust exercise for me to trust that the money will come in some form or other via one of the many streams or all of the streams.

But that it comes in also early enough in the month where it's ... I have the safety net comes in. At the kind of point where I'm like, okay, we're okay. And anything else on top of this is good and needs to also be for growing the biz. But I personally am okay at this stage. And it happens at a stage in the month where then it takes a lot of pressure off of the rest of the month.

And so literally yesterday, I'm just waiting right now for the rain to start, because we have rain in the forecast starting today for the rest of the week. Like it's going to be a solid week of rain, according to the forecast. And yesterday was like 30 degrees and lovely out. And the night was also lovely and I was supposed to have something happen.

It got pushed. And I was like, I have nothing on today. I could work, but I would rather garden and I would rather do some other stuff. And then it was like, I could go to bed right now, but I don't want to, because I'm enjoying being out in the fresh night air and it's ... I, and it... I'm not going to be able to for the next week because the weather is going to be shitty.

And I'm such a solar powered creature that I know that I will also then have ... like the work that I do can definitely be done while the weather is crappy and I don't want to be outside. And also I'll be more tired and have less energy for doing something like staying up late and in order to look at the stars literally.

And it's funny and I ... not so ironic, and also just so loaded in that, it's like, how do you play the capitalism game in order to get to the stage where you are fucking with capitalism and able to getting back to priorities? Which to be fair, humans are like ... a subsistence existence also is not ideal, right? Like it's ... just because you somehow magically remove yourself from capitalism, you still have basic needs that need to be met.

And so the thing with small “c” capitalism rather than big “C” capitalism, is that if you have your needs being met, because you have been able to pay other people whose zone of genius is to do the different things that you need as well, pay farmers for food, pay builders to do contract work, pay taxes so that the people who actually know and love and care about like infrastructure grids and shit like that can do that work, it's ... If we didn't have people doing those things, we would need to do all of those things.

And so you're also still then removing yourself from being able to necessarily enjoy all of the bits that can come from having that flexibility in your time to flow with the seasons, but it, it does not escape me that there is an irony in the more financially stable I become, the more time I am able to take away from work to, to come into seasonality and allow that aspect of my witchcraft practice to really come out and my human practice, really. It’s weird.

kalea turner-beckman: Yeah. Yeah. This is the first year that I have done this yarn work full time. I used to ...

ash alberg: [00:29:18] You did do it full-time just for other people. [Chuckles.] kalea turner-beckman: I guess, yeah.
ash alberg: Sorry. Yeah.
[Both laugh.]

kalea turner-beckman: Maybe. I've been working full ... I've been working more than full-time for many years. But I had ... I was juggling multiple part-time things which was exhausting.

ash alberg: Mmmhmm. Yep.

kalea turner-beckman: Now that this is the one primary thing that I'm doing, I, oh, I have so much more freedom with my time and I can organize the business seasonally. So much of the dye plant harvest and the wool harvest is seasonal anyway, and that connects me to the land. But I love that I'm able to take time to do things in their season, through my work and not just getting work done so that I can then have spare time to be in nature.

ash alberg: Yes. A hundred percent.
kalea turner-beckman: My work is happening in nature.

ash alberg: Yeah. And is directly tied to ... and part of that cycle, it's ... yeah. Which I suppose like naturally leads us into the next question and the question after that which is, what's an ... I think maybe let's just tie them together. So what's your relationship with ritual and magic and then how do you, or do you, incorporate that practice into your biz?

So like also maybe you can answer question three first and then answer question two. [Both laugh.]
kalea turner-beckman: I might just answer them together?
ash alberg: Yeah, that works too.

kalea turner-beckman: Yeah. I have a complicated relationship with ritual and spirituality. I was raised in ... as an only child with two parents with very different spiritual beliefs. My dad came from like rural Prairie, United Church Christianity, like very open Christianity and he was also a scientist. He had a master's degree in chemistry and when he talked about

religion, he was very open to metaphors and was not dogmatic about it at all, but definitely like old school, go to church Christian.

ash alberg: Yep.

kalea turner-beckman: And my mom is like a super new age like religious science ... it's not Scientology, it's a different thing ... But believes in reincarnation and took me to psychic fairs as a child and exposed me to a whole other world of spirituality. Took me to like Wiccan bookstores and...

ash alberg: Cool.

kalea turner-beckman: Yeah. And so I grew up knowing that both of these were valid ways to experience spirituality and they were very respectful of each other's views. They were very different, but they both created space for the other one to have different beliefs, which gave me the freedom to do whatever I wanted, basically. And they also told me, you can not have a religion, you can have a religion, you can have whatever religion you want. You can have mine, you can have your dads, you can make up your own.

Yeah. So when I was a teenager like most people who were girls in the early 2000s, I found witchcraft.

ash alberg: Yes. Yep.
kalea turner-beckman: Like the Buffy generation. We all had a copy of Silver RavenWolf's

Teen Witch. [Snickers.]
ash alberg: [Snorts.] Also just like remembering all of the episodes of the early Sabrina

before it got scary.

kalea turner-beckman: [Laughs.] Yeah. And I like really heavily identified as Wiccan through my teenage years. Did a lot of like solo practice ritual in my bedroom, burned lots of candles and incense, did spells in the backyard made like a real emotional connection with the trees in my parents' backyard. Yeah. Did all that. Loved it.

And it gave me a real, like, rootedness as a teenager. Being able to plan my months around the moon cycles and acknowledging all of the like, wheel of the year Wiccan sabbaths and that structure, that was just for me, that wasn't shared with my parents. I didn't like, create a coven with my friends. I ... it was really just my own personal spiritual practice that gave me a way to meditate and disconnect from my stressful moody teenage life.

And it was it was great. I'm really glad that I did that as a teenager. Then I moved away and lived in Scotland. Went to university at the university of St. Andrews and I'm also a choral singer and had sung in secular choirs all through my childhood and teenage years. And when I got to St Andrew's, the choirs were church choirs.

ash alberg: Mmmhm. Yep. [Both laugh.]

kalea turner-beckman: Yeah. So I joined all the church choirs, which meant for the first time in my life, I was going to church every Sunday, which was a super weird experience for me at first.

Even though I had grown up with my dad being Christian and we went to church on Easter and Christmas. I think I went to Sunday school for a while as a young child. And I have an uncle who was a United Church minister. So like that ... the Christianity was always present, but I didn't identify with it. And then suddenly I was going to church every Sunday and singing in the choir.

And also I joined a small chapel choir that did evening compline services on Thursday nights. So I was going to church twice a week every week [Laughs.]

ash alberg: That is it's so funny especially to if you were to just say that it's ... yeah, but when you're a choir kid, you're like, yeah, that's just what you do.

kalea turner-beckman: That's just what you do!

ash alberg: Especially because ... Also to be fair especially when we're not talking about like modern music, the people who could afford art in general, in historical times were the aristocrats and the organized religion.

So if it was a church or if it was the synagogue or it was the mosque, but like there, there is a reason that the big, beautiful buildings with the gold and the intricate work, like stone, masonry and carpentry and all of these things and the paintings and the music and the arrangements, the choral arrangements, are very frequently religious because that is who was fucking paying the bill. [Snickers.]

Like it's just part of it.
kalea turner-beckman: Yeah.

And while, while I was there, like comparing these two choirs was really interesting ‘cause the Sunday morning service that happened in the big chapel was very easy for me to just be like, this is Christianity, I'm here to sing in the choir. A lot of my friends were just there to sing in the choir because it was like ... the official university choir was the Sunday morning chapel choir.

So it was all university students. The music director was an employee of the university, the organ player were organ scholars who got scholarships with the university to train under the music director and play the organ for the church choir. So it was very easy for me to just be like the religion belongs to the church, I am part of the university choir, I am here as a student, I am separate.

But in the compline choir on Thursday evenings, it was a really beautiful, contemplative service that I guess has been ... has existed in St. Andrews for hundreds of years. The compline service isn’t really a thing that most churches still practice. And it was in this tiny stone chapel that was completely candle-lit.

ash alberg: Yes. I'm so excited already.
kalea turner-beckman: Yeah, no electricity.
ash alberg: Yep. Yep. And the stone, like it just the acoustics.

kalea turner-beckman: The stone was so beautiful. Like we, we had a practice at lunch on Thursdays before the Thursday evening service and during the rehearsals we were in this like cold stone building. You had to wear like extra layers of sweaters and there was no electricity. So we ... it was like dim and dark and it was just daylight streaming through the windows to read our music by. And then in the evening there were these candle chandeliers everywhere.

It was gorgeous and the compline service doesn't have a sermon. It was a lot of some chants in Latin, and like I think it was a Bible reading or two and a bunch of hymns. It was mostly sung, it was more singing than speaking. And there was like three minutes of silence at the end of every service.

It was short. It only went on for a half an hour. And at the very end the choir sang like a closing hymn. And then everyone just sat in silence until they felt ready to leave. And it lasted for a few minutes and slowly people would leave the sanctuary and go out into, like, a gathering entryway room where they could then then speak.

And that was like the most witchy Christian Church service I had ever experienced. And it was the first time that I felt any kind of like spiritual fulfillment in a Christian Church setting.

ash alberg: Yup.

kalea turner-beckman: It felt very sacred and like with the chanting and Latin and all of the singing and the silence and the candles, it felt like there was space for me to have my own spiritual experience on the inside while sitting in a room with other people, also having their own personal spiritual experiences on the inside.

There was no sermon that told us what to think about. It was a very individual thing anyway. That was weird for me to be like, oh, Christian service. That felt good. Weird. [Laughs.]

ash alberg: Yeah. Like normally those are things where it's ... but yeah, there's ... I, literally, the words in my brain were the ones that you were then saying, of like the sacredness and the spirituality, of having your own personal spiritual moment in a room with others who are having their own individual spiritual moments.

And the like, literally, as you were explaining all of that, I was like, the magic in that room would be so intense. And, if you follow a specific religion, whether it's Christianity or whatever, then you can prescribe the magic and the sacredness of that room to that specific belief, if you want to.

kalea turner-beckman: Yeah.

ash alberg: But I like if I was in that space, it would feel, I can imagine ... ‘cause I've been in, in places like that, infrequently. Not in that kind of like consistent setting where you get to

like really soak it in. But it, they feel the most nourishing and the most sacred in a lot of ways. And it has fuck all to do for me with a specific religion, but that does not mean that they are not deeply sacred and that they are not very magical and a space that is held by something that is much bigger and much more full than just humans.

kalea turner-beckman: Yeah. While I was in Scotland, speaking of this like individual spirituality, but supported in a room with others, having similar experiences, in Scotland, there's a long history of the Quakers as well, which are a super interesting offshoot of Christianity. And they have a really interesting connection with anarchists in Scotland because the Quakers are like, really non-hierarchical, quite anarchist, believe in ... believe in protest and like pacifist protest, very antiestablishment.

They, because they have spaces, they, in Scotland, support anarchist activists with space. So often when you go to activist conference or something, one of the options will be to like sleep on the floor in the Quaker house.

ash alberg: That's so funny. Oh my god.
kalea turner-beckman: Right??
[Both laugh.]
ash alberg: I love that and would totally do that.

kalea turner-beckman: When you go to the Edinburgh anarchist book fair, there's ... there's sometimes a like secret hookup to, “Hey, do you need a place to stay while you're in town for the anarchist book fair? The Quakers are hosts to us.”

ash alberg: [Laughs.] But I feel like this is also ... [clears throat.] Excuse me. It's like the bit about organized religion that can be really useful and beautiful when the right people are in charge or are given the literal keys to a space where it's ... instead of like, the organized religion aspect is the thing that allows them to have like physical space on property.

And then they open it up. Like it totally reminds me of in Halifax. I don't even know if it still is, but the North End church where literally it was the space where ... I saw multiple kink shows there. I went to multiple physical theater workshops there. I went to ... especially the performing arts and the independent theater scene.

And Halifax was so well held by this old church in North End Halifax because they just opened, they literally just opened their doors to everybody all the time. And it was like, yes, you were in a church. And so probably also if you have a specifically religious based trauma, then that could be a very uncomfortable space to walk into, I’m definitely not denying that.

But I think that's where churches and organized religion can actually be of service and be of help to their community. Where instead of being like, in order for you to come into this space, you must listen to us or you must agree with us, or we, you have to consent to us literally whacking you over the head with our sermons that they just say, come in, our doors are open.

If you are interested in a conversation, we're happy to have it with you. And otherwise the space is yours. We are here for the community, regardless of whether you agree with us or not, whether we have very differing opinions, if you come in and mean no harm, we are ... you're welcome to use this space with us.

kalea turner-beckman: Yeah. If I'll get to like how I got here. But fast forward a bit in my story, the church that I sing at now is one of these like old historic buildings that has opened itself up to the community and has hosted drag shows and has had scripture readers appear in the pulpit in kinkwear, and ...

ash alberg: I love it so much!! [Both laugh.]

kalea turner-beckman: Yeah. And does that kind of work? Anyway, so, going back to Scotland I started going to Quaker meetings.

ash alberg: Oh my god. [Both laugh. Ash snorts.]

kalea turner-beckman: Because I was a super overwhelmed university student and there was a Quaker meeting like, literally down the street from where I was living in my first year at university. And it was this beautiful, quiet, tranquil space to be for an hour with people who lived in the community who were not university students.

And it was so nice to just go and sit in a room with a bunch of grownups and to be quiet and feel supported in having a spiritual moment just to center myself on a Sunday morning. It conflicted with the chapel church that I sang in. So like on the rare times when there wasn't a church service for me to sing in, like if the choir was on a break or it was like reading week or all those in-between times, I would go to Quaker meetings on Sunday mornings.

ash alberg: I love that.

kalea turner-beckman: [Laughs.] Yeah, I guess I did it in my second year. Between my second and third year, I stayed in St. Andrew's over the summer. I didn't go home. I stayed and worked in Scotland and went to Quaker meetings through the summer and it was lovely.

I left Scotland to come home to Canada after I graduated and thought, great, now I don't have to go to church anymore. I'm back in a place where secular choirs are a thing again. And found a job posting for a section lead in a church choir. And I went to the audition interview thinking, oh, I don't know if ... I Just got out of years of going to church. Do I really ...

[Ash laughs heartily.]

Do I really want to commit to going to church again? But when I walked up to this church, the first thing I saw on the door as I was going in was a Pride flag. And I was like, okay, this is a cool church.

ash alberg: Yeah. A hundred percent.

kalea turner-beckman: Maybe I'm okay doing this. And I got the job and started singing in that choir. And 10 years later, I'm still singing in that choir. I'm not the section lead anymore. I left and moved to Toronto where I sang in another church choir for a year. In Toronto I went to an Anglican church and that was too much church.

The music was beautiful. The choir was great, but that was a church that I did not feel like I could have my own personal spirituality in. That was too much church. So when I moved back to Edmonton I joined my United church choir again and still sing there. And I've made so many friends through that choir who ... it's interesting because we meet in a spiritual environment, but the United church is so open spiritually that you get a lot of people coming to the church and joining the choir who don't necessarily identify as Christian or do identify as Christian, but come from a variety of different kind of Christian backgrounds and are really open-minded in their thinking. So like I've had a number of friends through the choir who identify as secret Wiccans.

[Both laugh.]
ash alberg: Yeah, I like that it's secret Wiccans though. Although I was having a conversation

...

kalea turner-beckman: It's not a secret. We all know who the Wiccans are in the choir. [Giggles.]

ash alberg: Exactly. But they're going to pretend to be well ... but also I was having this conversation, also I think on the podcast, if I'm remembering correctly, about how, because of the bullshit that is also attached to Wiccan history, that it can also be awkward for people who do identify with the religion to be like, “Yes, we are.”

Or like who identify with the practice, to then identify with what many people attach it to being. If you identify as Wiccan, then you in the same way that like, if you say, “I identify as Catholic” or “I identify as Muslim,” or “I identify as Jewish,” like there's things, or like specifically identify as “Orthodox Jewish,” there are things that we automatically prescribe to that based on some stereotypes and some realities that then may not fit. And there may be enough things that don't fit that it becomes like, uncomfortable to say “I'm this.”

kalea turner-beckman: Yeah.

And that's probably why, while I was at university and going to church all the time, I stopped identifying as Wiccan. Like I was very much a Wiccan as a teenager. And as I grew into being an adult and learned more about the history of Wicca and all of the baggage that comes with that, and all of the ... I started doing more research into the historical background of the, like, festival days and the practices and realized that a lot of it was made up and recreated or appropriated or there was just lots that I didn't feel comfortable with anymore. And I was weirdly finding room for my own personal spirituality within a Christian setting.

ash alberg: That's so funny. It's also ... it's fucking weird ‘cause both of us have ancestry that like the Wiccan sabbaths are very much aligned with the Celtic side of our families where like

really the sabbaths are pretty much like copy paste from, in particular Celtic history, a little bit of Druid, but like very much overlapped with that.

But then also they like picked and parceled like little bits from other areas too. It ... especially in the fucking age of the internet, but also in books.

kalea turner-beckman: Yeah.

ash alberg: Like when you look for ... I'm going to use Amazon as the example, because honestly Amazon is often where I'm then creating book wishlists, which then I buy from various other places sometimes ...

kalea turner-beckman: I use Amazon as a search tool and then buy from ... ash alberg: ... like other places if you can ...
kalea turner-beckman: ... other places, but it's a really useful search tool.

ash alberg: It is! And it's fascinating because in particular, the witchcraft genre of books in ... on Amazon, it can be really tricky to identify what is something that is attached to a specific cultural witchcraft history versus what is Wiccan and like big w Wiccan, and then what is somebody who's just like generally writing about really like ... it's unfortunate and also really weird to me, like anytime something is like earth-based, but not specifically earth-based as the term, earth-based is that's fine. But there's one term in particular that whenever I see a book that is I think it's like the “traditional pathways” or something like that. I'm like, mmm yeeahh, whose traditional pathways, right?

kalea turner-beckman: Which traditions? How old are those traditions?
ash alberg: And like, are you...
kalea turner-beckman: Are we talking big “W” Wiccan traditions from the seventies?

ash alberg: Yes, exactly. [Kalea laughs.] Is it art? Is it those old traditions, traditional traditions, or is it like, did you like copy and paste from a few different places? Did you decide oh, I think I like the Scottish one and I also liked the Slavic one and I'm really interested in this Orisha thing, but ... and it's yes, as humans, they're like, there's a lot of really beautiful things that come from the cross-pollination of overlapping and there's privilege in knowing your bloodlines that like, all of those things are true.

And also the, in particular, the pernicious way ... is pernicious the word I want? I think it is, it might not be ... that white people in particular will pick and choose things that they like from a thing without being like, do I actually have a relationship with this? Do I have a relationship that I was invited into by somebody else?

And I was trained in that thing or do I have a related interest in this? Like for example, the burning of sage as like somebody who is descended from Europeans, sage is actually a thing that we do use for smoke cleansing, but it is not white sage. It is garden sage, like they are related plant cousins that are not the same plant and as a result of an ... and also garden

sage was one of the things that we used for smoke cleansing, but Rosemary was much more common. Juniper was much more common, right?

Like it's, if you are going to dive into these things yes, there's, there is the stage of, “We don't know what we don't know,” and there will be tripping points consistently as we are learning and growing and accessing new things, and having access to those things becomes exponentially trickier when you've either been cut off from it violently or just displaced, or it's an oral tradition and you don't live in the area where the oral tradition is being passed on. Like all of those things absolutely complicate the matter, but in particular, and I think the way that white supremacy like really does a number on people and specifically fucks white people over is by creating this like blanket thing of “this is what to be white means.”

And it's like very flat. There's no nuance. There is no, there's no acknowledgement of like how different cultures and different histories are. They play different roles and create different stories. If you go to Scotland, the Scots have been fucked over by the Brits for centuries. [Kalea snorts in the background.] It's not as blanket as well. You have UK ancestry, therefore it’s like no, the Irish and the Scots and the Welsh have all been routinely fucked over by the Brits and also within Britain then depending on where you live, like there's just, there's so much nuance in it. And I think our responsibility is in continuing to learn the nuance.

It is not ever assuming that we know everything or that a thing once learned is now static and remains the same and remains true in the way that we define truth. Like the ... and accepting when it's okay, this is a thing that maybe feels like a thing and I'll pursue it a little bit, but also I'm not going to profit off it, I think is a big part of it.

But I'm also not going to ... there's, there's financial profit. There's also profiting as far as being known in society. Like I might not be selling a product, but if my, if my brand or my person ... if I wasn't being a brand, but I was going around in the world and being like, “Hey, I do this,” and part of the way that I become solidified in other people's eyes as doing that thing is by using things that I don't have a solid connection to, that I wasn't either invited into or that I don't have ... ancestors have invited me into it. There's all of that, just really fucks things up.

Like I think my grandma, who, she grew up with gypsies, much to her aunt's chagrin, and learned a lot of really intense ... like I am still learning and hearing more stories of just like how intense her magic was. And I also, I didn't ask her these questions when she was alive. I, now if I'm talking with a ghost, I might learn like a little bit more, but I don't get the specifics that I would have if I had asked her these questions when she was still living.

And so one of the things that she did really scarily well was read dreams because it was a thing that she learned from gypsies prior to the war. And it was a skillset that she maintained her whole life and was a magic specifically. It's one of the things that I'm learning is ... it was a little bit more than a skillset. [Laughs.]

But I didn't learn it from her. And so I don't, I'm like, I'm not going to go and study the specific way that gypsies who are from the like Eastern European region, read dreams and

assume that I have like access or allowance to that because my grandma was invited in. I was not invited in and I did not learn it from her.

So if I really want to learn that it's my job to go and ask permission from somebody who is actually of that, that like history and background and skillset to are. Are they comfortable with me learning that? And if they say no, that's that. It's a no. It's, it's a navigation of consent consistently, right?

kalea turner-beckman: Yeah. It's ... this is something that I think about a lot, because I have a variety of British Isle ancestry. My mother's mother was from Scotland and my mother's father was from England. And my dad's mother's family I've been told was Welsh but have been on the prairies for a long time. So I'm very connected with my Scottishness.

My Scottish grandmother was very Scottish, moved to Canada in the forties. I think her native language was Scottish Gallic. That was her first language, but she was not allowed to speak at school. Because she was in that era in Scotland. When you were not allowed to speak your language, you had to speak English.

So she moved to Canada and she taught her children, English, and the Gallic died with her, which is heartbreaking to me.

ash alberg: And there's also a very common story specifically among indigenous communities here in Canada, where the exact ... it is such a fucking terrible and effective, unfortunately, tool of colonialism, is you kill the culture and the sense of identity by killing the language and stopping people from being able to converse with their loved ones and with their community in their own language.

kalea turner-beckman: Yeah. My grandmother also suffered from schizophrenia, so I was also disconnected from that culture through mental illness. But one of the interesting things about her was when I was a child she would flip back and forth between English and Gallic ...

ash alberg: Oh!

kalea turner-beckman: ... by accident. And so I would be talking to her on the phone and suddenly she would just flip into Gallic and I would, I'd be like, “Grandma, I don't understand you.” [Laughs.] But even though I didn't understand the language I do still really honor those experiences of listening to my grandmother speak her language and knowing that was my language, even though I didn't know it.

So I, I will not claim to have put a lot of energy into learning Gallic, but it is a goal of mine in my lifetime to reclaim at least some of that language. I, I use Scottish Gallic words when I'm naming knitting patterns sometimes, especially when that knitting pattern is drawing on like Celtic inspired designs, cables, and color work, fair isle stuff that is Celtic-feeling. I bring the Gallaghan and would like to spend more time in my life, like really committing to learning more of the language.

ash alberg: We should go to Cape Breton. [Laughs.] kalea turner-beckman: Yes please!

ash alberg: Because we can actually study it there. We'll just go ahead and do a little residency.

kalea turner-beckman: Yeah.
ash alberg: And do an immersion class.

kalea turner-beckman: That would be like an experience of understanding the culture is always evolving because The Gaelic that they speak in Cape Breton ...

ash alberg: The Scots don't recognize it as being ... which is fucking funny but it's also, it's just ...

kalea turner-beckman: And it's funny ‘cause ... and it's funny ‘cause they call it Gaelic in Cape Breton. But in Scotland, it's Scottish Gallic, which is different than Irish Gaelic.

But the Cape Breton ...
ash alberg: ... is Scottish.
kalea turner-beckman: It came from Scotland, not from Ireland. It's very confusing. [Laughs.]

ash alberg: Yep. It's very well ... And that's why I say Gaelic, because my mom is from Cape Breton. And so it's ... we are Scottish on her side, one of her sides, and there, as far as I'm aware, there is no Irish anywhere, but mum grew up in Cape Breton. Our roots are ...

kalea turner-beckman: So it’s Gaelic. ash alberg: Yeah, exactly.

And it's, but it's Scottish Gaelic and yeah, it was so funny. I remember when I was like talking about cwtch and talking about the languages and I remember having a conversation with somebody who was like, the Gaelic that is done in Cape Breton is not ... And I was like, okay, but also this is like in, when you go to France, they will turn up their nose at Quebecois and Quebecois do not understand Franco-Manitobain meant a lot of the time.

Nobody understands a Cajun French. I am sorry. It is just its own thing. I remember, like I, I learned, I grew up with Franco-Manitobain French. I learned Parisian French in school because that is what we were taught. I studied with Quebecois teachers. And I remember going to university in Halifax sitting across the table with a friend who was from the North Shore, talking to her grandmother on the phone. And I literally did not know what language she was speaking until I heard her say “le parking, yeah” and I was like, oh, I think you're doing a Cajun French. And it was literally the Frenglish moment that I was like, oh, but I literally did not ... because it's just, the dialect is so entirely different.

And it's same with Newfoundland English, which I love so deeply is most likely the most accurate dialect for Shakespeare's contemporary use of the language.

kalea turner-beckman: Ooohhh, that's interesting!

ash alberg: Yes, it is, because the ... it just got maintained on the ...
kalea turner-beckman: Yeah, that makes sense.
ash alberg: ... but it's absolute, like if you were to have Newfies come ...
kalea turner-beckman: The same thing happened in Iceland
ash alberg: Yes, exactly.
kalea turner-beckman: ... where like modern Icelandic is closer to ancient, old Norse. ash alberg: Yes. Yep. It's so ...

kalea turner-beckman: Anyway, the same thing happened with Ukrainian. We can talk about Ukrainian in a bit when we talk about how I'm blending, my like family culture with Yaroslav’s. Yaroslav is from Ukraine.

But the Ukrainian that he learned at school in Ukraine is not the same Ukrainian that like Albertan-Ukrainian settlers speak.

ash alberg: Yep. Which has maintained ... It's so funny too, where it's ... it's frequently this thing of ... ‘cause it, you see it here in Manitoba with the Icelandic community. There are, I think, more Icelanders in Manitoba than possibly in Iceland or it's ...

kalea turner-beckman: I have heard that also. At least more like, more Icelandic speakers.

ash alberg: Yes. And it's really funny because when you're in Iceland and you're like telling them about in ... like the things that are done, especially like Gimli is very, like very strong around their Icelandic heritage. And we have the, I never say the name. But there is an Icelandic festival that happens in Gimli every year.

And it's great. And there's like certain foods that are always done dah dah dah. And when you go to Iceland and you're telling them this story, they're like, nobody eats that food anymore. That's not a thing. [Kalea giggles.]

It's, oh, because the settlers have maintained traditions through generations that the modern national ... like the folks that still live in the motherland of whatever motherland it is are like, we don't do that.

kalea turner-beckman: We don't do that anymore. The same thing happened with Scotland and dancing that ... because my Scottish grandmother taught me the Highland fling when I was like four years old and I decided that I needed to be a Highland dancer. And that was really the invitation into my heritage, more than just listening to her talk about ... talk in Gallic, but her inviting me into the dance tradition.

And she lived in Toronto when I was growing up so I didn't see her in person a lot, but we, went on a trip. We went to visit her. She taught me the Highland fling. There's a very cute picture of her holding my hands up ...

ash alberg: That's so cute.
kalea turner-beckman: ... with a big smile on her face. [Ash giggles.]

And we came home from that trip back to Edmonton and I declared as a five-year-old, “I need to be a Highland dancer!” And so my parents put me in Highland dance lessons, and I did that. I did it until I was 14 and had kilts and ...

ash alberg: The socks and everything.

kalea turner-beckman: ... the socks and shoes. Went to the Scottish import shop to buy my Highland dance shoes and listened to bagpipes every week and danced at Robbie burns day dinners. And just like did the whole Scottish thing as a child. So of course I grew up and wanted to go to university in Scotland.

ash alberg: Yep.
kalea turner-beckman: But when I went to Scotland, I, I took my Highland dance shoes and

was like,

ash alberg: I'm here.

kalea turner-beckman: I'm here. And there were no Highland dancers in St. Andrews.

ash alberg: Ooohhh, that's so sad!

kalea turner-beckman: They do Ceilidh dancing, but there's not a lot of Highland dance in modern Scotland.

And it's because of the Highland clearances, all the Highlanders came to ... not to Edmonton, but to Canada. So there's way more Highland dancers in Canada than there is in Scotland. And I learned when I was there one summer that sometimes they ship Highland dancers from Canada to dance at Edinburgh castle for the tourists in the summer.

ash alberg: Wooooowwww. [Kalea giggles.] That would be a great summer job. Also, what the fuck? That's so funny.

kalea turner-beckman: Right?? [Laughs.] Yeah. Which is interesting to think that growing up as a Highland dancer is actually a Canadian Scottish tradition

ash alberg: Yes. And that's the interesting thing too, right? Is like, I remember one time teaching this one little boy who his mom was Irish and his dad was Scottish and he looked at me, he says, “And I’m Canadian.” It's yeah, that is it. Like Canadians ... because he is like a direct descendant of immigrants and he's first gen, then he's, “I'm Canadian. That's my identity. And my history is this.”

But Canadians, we’re like, if you go back 17 generations, then I am this, which a hundred percent I do that. Like when we trace ... like my mom's side of the family came over on the first ships that brought like more than just fuckin soldiers, so we like, in order to get back to Scotland and get back to the Hebrides, you have to go back at least six generations. And then

on my dad's side, he ... my grandma came over after the war, but I think that's, it's a really interesting thing when we start to add in the overlaps of war and forced displacement and slavery and all of these other things, but then also chosen immigration.

Like you, you choose to travel, you weren't forced to travel and how that kind of feeds into ... and depending on where you choose to travel and what else they ... like who else is there and how common it is for them to accept in travelers? Like Poland. You don't see many people other than native Poles there because they don't have anything to offer an immigrant, right?

There's no social safety net. Literally my Aunt Juta is in her nineties and she is still working because there's no pension plan. If you were to move there because you were displaced from your own place and you needed assistance to reestablish and create a new life, Poland doesn't have that for you, and because of that, there's not that many people who come there.

And so when somebody does come, then it's “Who the fuck are you? And why are you here?” [Kalea giggles.] They're not rude about it necessarily, but it is, it ... there is absolutely like an interesting kind of like ... there's like a weirdness in the way that we sometimes more openly versus less openly accept others with open arms.

And then also like at what point do we accept them as, okay, now you are part of this fabric? And the next round of newcomers is looked at with questioning eyes and the ... you look at like how it wasn't that long ago, as far as timelines, like actual number of years that Irish people came over and were looked at as being like, highly suspicious.

And it's now ... we've got ... it's almost like layers of sand, I'm thinking. I don't know, like next layer. And people in general are shitty to one another, unfortunately, but also people can be really lovely to one another. We just went on and I think I just took us on a lot of tangents and I apologize to our listeners. [Laughs heartily.]

kalea turner-beckman: [Giggles.] You're editing this, right?

ash alberg: I ... probably not. [Laughs.] I might just make this into two episodes. We will have part one and part two, I feel like that might be more reasonable than a two-and-a-half-hour episode. Okay.

We've answered it but how does ... so we've talked about how you've come to ritual, and then how does that ... we've also talked about how the seasonality of things plays into your work and you mentioned briefly about how your knitting patterns can be inspired by some of that as well, some of that history and ancestral connection. Is there, are there more explicit ways or does that kind of feel like that just like holistic way of bringing things in is how the magic and ritual and spiritual practice comes into your business?

kalea turner-beckman: Yeah. Okay.

So I think over this past year, being stuck at home during the pandemic, especially because singing is basically the most dangerous thing that you can do in this pandemic, choir has been canceled. Like a church can be live streamed, but you can't live stream a choir ...

ash alberg: No, not well.

kalea turner-beckman: ... from everyone's home.

Like we've done a couple things where you like record your own part and you send it in. And then someone has to mash that all together. And it's a lot of work and it's not very fulfilling. And just ... yeah. There’s just ... there’s just no choir.

So in ... I had found this way to have my own personal, more earth based pagan type spiritual experiences within a Christian surrounding, and I had found friends that supported that open eclectic spiritual practice. And it was mostly through the music that I felt that connection. And since choir has been canceled and I have not been going to church anymore, I, it has opened like time and space and energy for me to think more about my pagan roots and think more about solitary ritual and how do I find those moments of sacredness in my life again?

Which has me thinking about like, where are the intersections of this like weird post-Christian thing that I've been living in and paganism and the Wiccan paganism that I knew as a teenager? But now more of a considered, intentional reconnection with my heritage paganism, which I've also been thinking about with Yaroslav, that we've been living together for a number of years now and where we're now starting to commit to each other as a family and as ... in building a life together with the intention of being together for however long that is.

And so with him, with his Ukrainian heritage, we talk a lot about .... about like, decolonizing culture for ourselves because the Scottish culture is an indigenous culture that was colonized. And then we ... the Scots just moved to Canada and colonized

ash alberg: Yes.

kalea turner-beckman: ... the indigenous people. So it's ... I'm conscious of not trying to use this as a way to escape my feelings of white guilt, but as a way of decolonizing my own understanding of myself, which can help me connect to the indigenous history from a place of understanding, because I can ... it's not the same, but I can imagine better what it could feel like. And acknowledging that white supremacy is not good for me either, and that it has disconnected me from my own history and background and culture.

And so as a way of disconnecting myself from the hurtful colonizer culture that we live under and to connect to my own indigenous history in Scotland, which is similar to Yaroslav because as a Ukrainian, he has also come from this culture that has been colonized by Russia. The colonizing power in that part of the world is Russia. And he's from Eastern Ukraine, which has had even more Russian influence than Western Ukraine.

So he grew up in a Russian-speaking city, his first language was Russian. He learned some Ukrainian at school, but at this point, his English is much better than his Ukrainian. And that's something that is really difficult for him. He was really angry that he has been disconnected from his Ukrainian culture and that he knows more about Russian pagan festivals than he knows about Ukrainian ones.

And, and so he's also going on this journey with me. He really identifies as an atheist. He's not interested in it as a spiritual practice, but he is interested in uncovering his Ukrainian culture and connecting with it more. And so we’re, we're researching together and learning together about our own cultures and mashing them together in a way that can be meaningful for our joint family, which is something that I'm really enjoying doing.

And thinking about like the difference in colonizing cultures, between Russian colonization and British colonization and just having another perspective to understand this whole ...

ash alberg: How colonization works ... we get ... because it is like, every single area of the world you look ... and there are like, Europe and specific countries within Europe, massively colonized the rest of the world, but also within each portion of the world, different forces colonized others. And there is like ongoing and long processing, undoing needed, of trauma attached to that as well.

And I think like, I had a good kind of example or analogy for folks who maybe are like, “What do you mean white supremacy is bad for everybody?” It's ... it is bad for everybody in the same way that patriarchy is bad for everybody, right? Like patriarchy damages cis men, not in the same way that it damages other folks, but it is also damaging to them and it is restricting to them.

And it is this flattening and refusal in the same way that colonizing is a flattening and white supremacy is flattening and refusal to acknowledge the nuance and the difference that we all have as humans and the ways that we connect across like a single tick box of “you're this,” or “you're that,” and also the ways that those tick boxes can create a shared experience.

And if you allow them to blossom could be really beautiful and healthy, but we're scared of people coming into their power in that way. It does not serve the people who have maintained power and want to maintain power. And so therefore we will just flatten it all out. And there you go. And then ... but also we'll just conveniently co-opt shit when it's convenient for us.

kalea turner-beckman: [Laughs.] Yeah.

ash alberg: Like I think of the folks who are currently trying to navigate, like, specifically Norse, Norse mythology, Norse tradition, or folklore, and the way that it has been co-opted by the alt-right and Nazis and white supremacists where they're taking pieces of culture, which may frequently have fuck all to do with their own ancestral culture. And they're like, oh, we're going to take this. And we're meaning it to be this and people who are actually of that culture are, “Excuse me, what the fuck? What are you doing? Now what are we doing?”

And then it becomes this like really uncomfortable navigation of. How do you abandon that thing fully? Do you not abandon it? I feel like it's like how there ... the swastika, for example, pre-Nazi did not mean what it now means, but also nowadays, because that is what it means, there is no way that you can pretend that it is not, in the same way that people who are ... whatever the ... what's the flag in the states, the Southern, the union flag or whatever? I’m ...

kalea turner-beckman: The confederate flag?

ash alberg: Thank you. That one, I was ... union, wrong word. The confederate flag. Like you can pretend that it exists in this little bubble and means this specific thing. That is not true, and at this current time in history too - and I have very strong feelings about this, about any of these specific things - and with the Norse that I don't know what the kind of, like, current navigation of that is.

I guess it'll be a question of like, how does it play out over time? Do they co-opt it enough that then you don't necessarily abandon it and pretend that it never existed in its other context, but you cannot now separate it from the context that it is very much attached to now and the harm that it has caused as a result of that, right? Yeah. The swastika used to mean something very different, and it is basically the antithesis of what it was then used for but because it was used in that way, you can't pretend that it didn't either.

kalea turner-beckman: Yep. Yeah. [Ash snorts.] I think that one of the, one of the things that holds white supremacy in its place is white fragility and this idea that white people have that that giving up white supremacy and becoming anti-racist is going to hurt us ...

ash alberg: Yeah.
kalea turner-beckman: ... that we have to give up our privilege in order to make the world

better for other people. And I think that's really harmful.

ash alberg: Absolutely. ‘Cause it's this finite resource thing. I literally just had this conversation with ... I don't know if Angie's interview is going to come out before yours or after, but we talked about the same thing, where this idea of a thing being finite and capitalism ... like it's consistently all of these powers of oppression and systems of oppression are built off of this concept of there is a finite amount of this resource and whatever that resource might be, whether it is money, whether it is power, whether it is your personal identity, and that if you let go of it in order for other people to have access to the world to be able to move through the world with more freedom than they currently have ... Not that they want to move in the same way that you do.

I think that's part of it too, is it's this idea of if we give up this thing, they're going to come into this exact spot and they're going to take it and then they're going to take all of it. And it's literally fucking ... none of that is true! You're making an assumption that people want to live in the way that you live, which is ... maybe they do, probably a lot of them don't like ... but also even if they did, they're ... like, you're assuming that there is a finite amount of space and there's not like you're both currently existing on the earth.

Clearly there is enough space for your two bodies to currently exist on the earth! And so there is space maybe in some cases, like with land reparations, then yes, you are physically giving back a chunk of a thing to people who had it, like, forcibly removed from them. So yeah, maybe now your yard becomes smaller or maybe you ... like your ... if you own exponential or like specific amount of farmland and part of that farmland is then given back then, yeah, you lost a field.

That doesn't mean that you are now harmed in a way ... because let's be real, like, reparations are never going to be freely given in a way that so dramatically harms the people who held that power in that moment. Like they're not going to give away your best fields and then also give away all of your second best fields so that then you can no longer exist.

That's not, it's not how it works. And I think also the thing that is harmful is assuming that ... for sure, I'm sure that there are people who are like, yeah, I want your best land. That's a legitimate thing to want. But I think also the assumption that everybody wants the thing that you value the most and that they are going ... that you giving up something means you are giving up all of the things that you value most and that you will never get them back and that you never have access to them and that other people are now going to be able to move around the world.

And that you ... I think this is maybe the like most insidious fear bit, is that by you giving up a thing and them being able to then have access to it means that you are now going to be restricted in the way that they have been restricted for so fucking long. Like I think maybe that's the deep fear that's at the core of it.

kalea turner-beckman: Yeah. Anyway, I find it much more useful to think about dismantling white supremacy as a good thing for me too. And finding ways for me to disconnect myself from white supremacy and find the ways in which my life can become more meaningful and full without it is a much more useful way for me to think of the personal internal work that I need to do in order to be a better ally and co-conspirator.

ash alberg: I like that word, co-conspirator.
kalea turner-beckman: Yeah, I like it too. I want to ditch capitalism too. [Laughs.] ash alberg: Yeeah. Create a fun new system where we all have lots of land.
kalea turner-beckman: What was the question that we were talking about?
ash alberg: I think we were talking about ...

kalea turner-beckman: We were talking about how ritual is in my business. Yeah. So I've been thinking about personal pagan-based ritual in ... because I'm not going to church and getting spiritual fulfillment from singing, I've been thinking more about my own personal practice at home and it's coming through in the seasonality of the work for sure. Being outside.

I've been skirting the fleeces in my mom's backyard. I'm storing all of the wool in my mom's garage and skirting in her backyard, which means that I've been spending a lot of time in that backyard where I did all of my Wiccan rituals

ash alberg: Oh my god yes!

kalea turner-beckman: As a child, like under the apple tree where I had all of my rituals and gave all of my, like gifts to the earth. So that has felt really grounding, just being on that piece of land that I have an emotional connection to. Lovely.

But I'm also thinking about this confluence of Celtic ritual and Ukrainian ritual and, and like I find it really, I really enjoy the bits of paganism that have been preserved in Christianity. Like especially when Christianity was taking over Great Britain, a lot of folk culture was incorporated into it as a way to convince people to convert. And so there's almost a part of me that feels like that's my truer religious heritage than the like, Wiccan-recreated Celtic-infused spirituality.

But the stuff that has survived within Christianity feels like something that I'm entitled to connect with, even if I'm like picking apart the pagan-ness of it and disregarding the Jesus in this.

ash alberg: Yes.

kalea turner-beckman: That feels like my true religious heritage. So I've been looking at what's a good example. Like Lughnasadh, the fall harvest festival is often conflated with Lammas, which is a Christian festival that means loaf mass, which was the mass where you made bread to celebrate the fall.

ash alberg: Yeah, the harvest.

kalea turner-beckman: Yeah. [Both laugh.] So like things like that, where you can see the paganism underneath the Christian practice are things that I'm like really excited about. And I'm finding similar things in the Ukrainian stuff that Yaroslav and I have been digging into that ... when we were looking at spring Equinox celebrations he thought of a thing that his mother always did called maz ... Maslenitsa, which is basically like Shrove Tuesday, Pancake Tuesday, but in the Orthodox church, where you make pancakes and use up all of the like milk and eggs and stuff, before you go into the fast of lent before Easter.

And so we did some research on Maslenitsa and found that it was connected with a pre-Christian like Slavic spring festival. And then we looked up the Ukrainian version, ‘cause I was like, if I'm going to name a pair of socks after Maslenitsa, I'm not going to name it in Russian, even though that's the word that your mother used for this day that you celebrated as a child, we're going to use the Ukrainian term.

And the research led us down this path where The Ukrainian term is Maslitsa, but it doesn't come from the same root festival. It was a very complicated, let's see if I can remember it. I should have written this down for this podcast because it was really confusing and we were really confused for a bit.

I think that the no, I forget the connection. I can, you can edit out my big long pause, hopefully.

ash alberg: [Laughs.] Ohh, that’s okay. What is happening to my computer right now?

kalea turner-beckman: I can tell you later if you're interested, but it was like, one thing was named after another, that was named after another. And some cultural festival, things that happened in Russia are not the same things that happened in pre-Christian Ukraine, but they get confused all the time because the names are very similar: Maslitsa, Maslenitsa.

Anyway. Yes. So the way that I'm incorporating this kind of research and meaning into my business is through pattern design and pattern naming, and I'm also working on a sock advent calendar for the next winter holiday season which is going to be like an interfaith advent calendar and ... and a super wacky eclectic mix of things, because in ... I'm just, I'm going to share with my followers, like, what is a winter holiday season like in the Luddite household?

Because ...

ash alberg: Cuuute! I like this way of doing it. Cause I always thought, like I ... advent calendars as a thing. I also grew up loving Christmas, not in a churchy way, although I do love the music of Christmas, which of course is churchy. Not all of it, but a fair amount. And it like Yule has just become a thing that I've over the last several years started celebrating pretty much for myself.

And it's about ... my family history is very much Christmas and it's also ... the winter solstice period is a time of a lot of major religions, especially in the north, the various holidays. And so the idea of an advent calendar is just yes, I love this, but then also feels semi-awkward when you do make a point of having a brand and a business that is like welcoming and open to everybody.

Almost everybody except the Nazis.
kalea turner-beckman: Yeah. They're not welcome. [Laughs.] ash alberg: No, they can fuck right off.

kalea turner-beckman: Yeah, because, so in the yarn world, hand dyed skeins of yarn, making mini skeins is quite labor intensive. And so creating a full like 25 day advent calendar, which would be the traditional Christian way to do, it is ... it's a lot.

ash alberg: Ridiculous. Yep.
kalea turner-beckman: It's a lot of work.
ash alberg: Yep. It's a terrible idea. Don't do it.

kalea turner-beckman: Yep. And so there's been more of a culture of people doing 12 day advent calendars where they're conflating the 12 days of Christmas with advent calendars. Which at first, because as a choral singer, I'm a bit of a liturgical dork. Even though I don't

care about the Bible, I do enjoy the, like the liturgy of the year and the way that the things get talked about in Christian services, changes seasonally throughout the year, and you go through different ... I really love the personal introspection that happens during Lent. I don't really care that Jesus is being reborn at Easter, but I love ...

ash alberg: Zombie Jesus.

kalea turner-beckman: Right, Zombie Jesus! But I love Lent. And I love the music that happens at Lent, and I love all of the like silence and quiet time that happens at Lent. So I'm like, I'm a bit of a liturgy nerd in that way. And I've learned a lot about it from the perspective of programming music for services, for like small group choral stuff that I've done, where you have to choose music that is appropriate for whatever service that you're singing.

And so I used to get really worked up about the advent calendars, ‘cause I'd be like, the 12 days of Christmas is not advent! The 12 days of Christmas is actually after Christmas! It's not during advent and advent is 25 days! It's not 12. [Laughs.]

ash alberg: Yep. And then also you're dealing with the Yule season and like none of those quite overlap with Yule days and also depending on who is practicing Yule then those dates also sometimes shift a little bit.

kalea turner-beckman: Yeah. So like my liturgy nerd went a little bitchy but then I, when I was actually thinking about what would be a meaningful way to do an advent calendar for me in my family with Yaroslav, I started opening up to this idea of the 12 day advent calendar because, in our house, so I'm from a Christian background, grew up celebrating Christmas, that's really important to me. Also really love the solstice and bringing my pagan beliefs into that, and there's lots of pagan stuff that you can dig out of Christmas, like the Christmas trees and the giving of gifts. There's lots of stuff that happened at this time of year pre-Christian ...

ash alberg: Yep.

kalea turner-beckman: ... in the white European culture that we come from. But Yaroslav complicates things even further because not only is he Ukrainian he also has Jewish heritage. His mother was Jewish, but he didn't grow up celebrating ...

ash alberg: Any of the ...

kalea turner-beckman: ... any of it really. But the thought of incorporating some of that into our practice feels right in a way. And also because he's from modern Ukraine, the Soviet Union kind of killed Christmas.

ash alberg: Oh yeeaahh! I didn’t even think of that.
kalea turner-beckman: Yeah, the Soviet, yeah. The Union banned all religious holidays. It was

a purely secular state.
ash alberg: Yep. Which has its own level of ...

kalea turner-beckman: It’s own thing.
ash alberg: ... crazy organized religion bullshit.

They're like anti religion of like ... Like I, you never meet somebody who is as fervent a believer as someone who is like deeply atheist, because it is ... you're believing in a thing. It's the absence of a thing, but it is to believe ...

kalea turner-beckman: It’s still a belief.

ash alberg: ... to that extent. Yeah ... Is that that takes a level of commitment.

kalea turner-beckman: Yes. Yaroslav is a very committed atheist. But it also means that when he was growing up New Year's Eve was celebrated in the way that we celebrate Christmas. So like they put up a tree and decorated for New Year's Eve and Uncle Frost comes and brings presents for children that they opened on New Year's Day. Uncle Frost comes and brings and puts presents under the tree and the children, and then the next morning ... Yeah. [Laughs.]

ash alberg: That is fascinating!
kalea turner-beckman: It’s like a weird Soviet version of Santa Claus. He's Uncle Frost. ash alberg: So funny.

kalea turner-beckman: Yeah. And like they have parties on New Year's Eve. It's like a ... like there's a family dinner. A lot of the things that we would do at Christmas happen on New Year’s Eve.

ash alberg: Mmkay.

kalea turner-beckman: ... for him. But then also in watering Ukraine where they can practice religion again, after the Soviet Union, it’s the Orthodox church. And so Ukrainian Christmas is January 6th, I think. Sixth or seventh.

ash alberg: Yeeaah I want to say it's around then. I never remember, then all of a sudden, like my news feed is filled with all of my friends who are Ukrainian Orthodox that are like Merry Christmas!! I'm like, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And then they eat delicious things and I'm jealous.

kalea turner-beckman: Yeah. So like basically from Yule until Ukrainian Christmas, we just have interfaith celebration time.

ash alberg: I love it.

kalea turner-beckman: Yeah. [Laughs.] So we make a big deal of New Year's Eve so that Yaroslav feels connected. I cook the things that I would expect on a Christmas Eve dinner at Christmas Eve and Yaroslav cooks the things that he would expect on a New Year’s Eve table for New Year’s Eve.

We get two Christmases. If we ever have children, they are definitely getting gifts both from Santa Claus and Uncle Frost.

ash alberg: Yes. [Laughs.] I love it.
kalea turner-beckman: Yeah. And I also realized that this period from Yule, or Christmas Eve

to January 6th-ish, Ukrainian Christmas, is the 12 days of Christmas. ash alberg: Perfect!
kalea turner-beckman: Like that period of the 12 days from ...
ash alberg: ... Falls within that time.

kalea turner-beckman: ... Falls within that, yeah. So I realized I could create this interfaith thing where I talk about all of my family traditions and offer 12 ... I'll make 13 things. You get a big one to open on the last day. I'll make 13 things, and then ...

ash alberg: Also 13 is a magical number.
kalea turner-beckman: It is! Also 13 has lots of pagan-y feels about it, very witchy-feeling

number.

And I'm also going to offer that you can start it, whatever, w whenever it makes sense for you and your own spiritual practice at this time of year, do you want to start it and open the big present on Yule? Do it. Do you want to save the big present until Ukrainian Christmas? Do that! You want to open your 12th presence during Chanukkah? Go for it. Like ...

ash alberg: [01:35:28] Yep.

kalea turner-beckman: I'm going to offer them in a sequence that makes sense and offer some suggestions for when you are going to open the presents and offer people the freedom to choose, what is the spiritual practice that makes sense for you and your family?

ash alberg: That sounds so lovely. Also requires so much pre-planning. I think this is the thing that non-yarnies don't get is that like, advent calendars in yarn world literally go on sale ... if they go on sale in August, they're late. Like they generally are on sale in July because of the amount of prep that it takes to make so much small product is like exponential, and then they need to be done and shipped in time to arrive in advance of any of the ... Chanukkah is usually early.

You're also dealing with shipping delays during the holiday season. Like normally you want them shipping sometime in October, ideally to make sure that they arrive where they need to in time for them.

kalea turner-beckman: Yeah. I'm planning for a July release.

ash alberg: Sweet. Which means that, ‘cause this is going to, in early early August. So hopefully there are still some advent calendars available. If not, then it's your own fault! And so ...

kalea turner-beckman: We'll see how my pre-planning goes. It could be late July that I end up really ... I haven't set a release date. So I expect that in early August, either they will have just gone on sale or there will be calendars available in August.

ash alberg: That's fair. And if they're not, then it just means that people should be following you so that the next year they can hop on that real quick. And also that they are aware of your sock club, which I am suuuuper stoked about. So we've naturally fallen over into the final question, but we do need to come back around.

This is definitely going to be a two-part episode. That's fine. We, so we'll come back, which is maybe a nice way of ending it with our question of, what do you wish you knew when you were younger? But for what's next for you ... So we've got the advent calendar. We also have sock club and sock club is currently ongoing for 2021, but 2022 will be available ....... question mark?

Also tell us about sock club. I love sock club. I think it's the best idea ever.

kalea turner-beckman: I adore sock club. So sock club is this way that I have devised to make sock yarn available to people and make it a sustainable product for me to produce that acknowledges the yearly cycle of it, that I buy all of the wool in the spring during shearing season, send it off to the mills. The mini mills that do the worsted spinning sometimes take a little bit longer to get through the spinning then Custom Woolen Mills does.

So I get the sock yarns back last, usually, of my yearly runs of yarn. And they're small batches, so I've released them ... this is the first year that I've had like a collection of sock yarns to release. And I released it in what? February, I think was when I announced it. Yeah.

And I had enough yarn to do four, four different kits of a pattern designed specifically for the different yarns. And that immediately spoke to me as well, “You should release it as quarters throughout the year.” And so I chose the equinoxes and solstices.

And for this round, I'm digging into like the Ukrainian folk practices around the equinoxes and the Swedish Scandinavian processes, like practices around the solstices. That's the thing I didn't talk about. I'm mostly connected with my Scottishness, but my father's family was originally from Sweden.

And I retained the name Beckman that comes from the Swedish settlers. And I did my master's degree studies in Malmo in Sweden and spent enough time in Sweden and in other parts of Scandinavia that I feel like I've been invited in enough ...

ash alberg: Yeah.
kalea turner-beckman: ... into parts of that culture where I don't really identify as Scottish,

or as Swedish in the way that I identify as Scottish.

But there are, there are bits of Scandinavian culture that creep into the way that I practice culture in my own life. So I'm delving into those around the solstices and the Ukrainian side for the equinoxes. And I'm ... for 2022, I'm thinking about the four Celtic fire festivals which

are the sabbaths that have been incorporated into Wicca that actually have historical Celtic roots and not just made up stories.

ash alberg: Yep. [Snort giggles.]

kalea turner-beckman: So I ... it's, this has given me a way to think about the different ways that we mark our passage through the year that there are different landmarks that we can use for the different quarters of the year. And so each year, and I'm excited to take a slightly different spin on what that looks like, which way of moving through the year are we looking at?

And it'll also depend on like when I get the yarns back from the mill when I can start. So this year I got everything back in like January, February, and so I was able to release it in time for the spring Equinox at the end of March. Next year when I'm looking at the Celtic festivals, it'll be a toss-up whether I have the yarn back in time enough to start at, in bulk ...

ash alberg: Yeah. Which ...

kalea turner-beckman: ... at the beginning of March ...

ash alberg: Very early. Yep.

kalea turner-beckman: Very early, or maybe it'll have to wait until Beltane, so ...

ash alberg: Beltane’s a good fire.

kalea turner-beckman: Yeah.

[Both giggle.]

ash alberg: But then so, does that mean that 2022 would potentially extend over into 2023 for Imbolc, which is February?

kalea turner-beckman: I guess, yeah, if I have to wait. ash alberg: Yeah. I like that.

kalea turner-beckman: Ideally I'll be able to have one of spring, summer, autumn, winter, but ...

ash alberg: But maybe your winter is late winter. I think that's cool too, though. It's like we ... it's so funny the way that, especially when we're like navigating business as small business owners who are anti-capitalist and also want to like use capitalism basically against itself and ... and are trying to stay in sync with the seasons and with nature and recognizing like our connection and part of it and being part of it.

And as humans we create these arbitrary ... like time is ... if COVID has taught us anything, and it should have taught us a lot of things, but if it's taught us anything, it is that time as a linear thing is a false concept of the utmost degree. Which I knew long before, but other people suddenly were like, I just, I don't know what time is.

I'm like, it's because it's a lie. So I like the idea of, of not sticking within a calendar year. There are some bits of a calendar year that feel nice. And then other bits, witch’s new year is Samhain, which is end of October, right? Like it's the very weird year ... or point in time to be like, ah, yes, but also it makes sense.

‘Cause it's ... you're starting, you're really going into winter and winter is this time of hibernation and the ... here in the Northern hemisphere at least, it's the time where everything goes quiet and sleeps and rests and prepares. And it's that is really, if we're thinking about when should you be doing strategic planning for your business? And that that's the ideal time of year to do it.

I never do it. Unfortunately also for us with our industry, it is the worst time to try and take a break because basically September through December is a shit show and in good ways, but it is a shit show. And you have basically no time to do anything except be fulfilling orders because it is ... it's gifting season. It is making season, it is knitting season. Suddenly everybody remembers that their needles exist again after a hot summer.

kalea turner-beckman: Yeah.
ash alberg: It's a shit show. There's not the time ...
kalea turner-beckman: Yeah.
[Both talk at the same time.]
ash alberg: ... the ideal time to rest for an extended period.

kalea turner-beckman: The other ... Talking about the way that sock club makes my business sustainable ... Also, because of the seasonality of it, I'm making decisions for the next sock club in the spring. So if I've just gotten the yarn back from the previous year, start dyeing it, start visioning up the patterns, release that year’s sock club ... but getting people to sign up for the whole club at once for the year means that I get an infusion of cash that lets me know how many people are interested in sock club.

How much money do I have to invest in the next round? And then I have that money upfront and I can use that to make decisions about how much wool do I buy and what kind of processing do I commit to for the next round?

ash alberg: Yep. That's so important. And I think it's something that like needs to be recognized and acknowledged more, especially in our industry, but especially as small biz owners. Like we're not the ... specifically in the way that yarn works, and when we're working with mills and sending wool to the mill, like, you are putting a large chunk of money upfront long before you are going to be selling anything.

Even if your mill doesn't require a down deposit or doesn't require you to pay until after processing and they're shipping it to you, you still then have a chunk of time before you have it dyed or scoured or whatever. And it goes ... like there's a long chunk of time and it's a lot of money on specifically the processing end.

kalea turner-beckman: Yeah, on a full year cycle that you're making financial commit ... even if you don't have to pay upfront for it, you're making a financial commitment for a full year.

ash alberg: Yup, exactly.

kalea turner-beckman: And using sock club as a way to communicate that to my customers so that they understand and can buy in and feel like they're supporting the development of future sock yarn is really important to me. But I also acknowledged that's ... it's a big chunk of money for a lot of people. A lot of people can't afford to spend over $200 on a year's worth of sock yarn in one go. So I also offer an installment plan.

The first option on my website is to buy the whole thing upfront, but if you need the installment plan, you can send me an email and I'll send you a specialized invoice so that you can pay for each shipment quarterly before they ship.

ash alberg: And we should also state that, that is also making a financial commitment. It's not that you're purchasing one quarter and then you're like, okay, I'm done now. Like you are still committing to the whole thing. It just gives you a little bit more breathing room, right? That's the beautiful thing about payment plans and also the slightly risky thing about payment plans.

I personally love payment plans, especially for more expensive things. Like my courses, my online courses have payment plans because it makes them more accessible. And it, I ... and I myself have frequently used payment plans when it comes to investing in the next level of my growth when it comes to my business.

Because to have a chunk of money that is that big is not always feasible. Even if you have extra income, then it's still not always feasible to drop a huge amount at once, but you still also are by choosing the thing. You are still committing to paying for all of it eventually. It's just, you have a little bit more breathing room when you're doing it.

And I think that's an important thing for folks to remember, especially when you are working with small businesses that defaulting on a payment plan, particularly for small businesses is like, it really fucking sucks. I've never had it happen yet. I appreciate that. And I also ... I have a lot of like space and empathy and capacity for holding extra space for folks who I know are committed and I know are not lying to me and are not just like trying to get out of a thing where I know yeah, no, you are, things are tight and that's okay.

And eventually you will pay me and that's fine. That's okay. But it also takes a certain level of business to be at. Like two years ago, I wouldn't be able to do that. Like I now have a lot more space to be able to say yes, the chunk of money that you are going to be paying me over the course of this chunk of time, if you're communicating with me and you're not ghosting, then yeah. A hundred percent. Let's talk about this. I ... life gets in the way. And there are lots of reasons why all of a sudden we can't make a payment. And I think there, there is, there needs to be, oh ...

[Cell phone rings in the background.]

Oh my God, are you ... I'm so sorry, we're just going to cut this off. Fucking Telus. How do I decline it? It won't let me decline ... fuck off. It won't even ... [Groans.] All right. So sorry about that. That will actually get cut out, fuck sake. That reminds me to put my phone on airplane mode.

The next time I do one of these yeah, it's ... I have lots of space and capacity for folks that need to have that flexibility because life gets in the way and we can't control everything, but there's good faith attached to that. And it requires a certain level of stability on our ends to be able to even offer that, which again is why capitalism is fucked. But by using capitalism against itself, it gives us more capacity to then offer that further and we just slowly, maybe not so slowly, offer it like here, ready, go and fuck with this. [Laughs.]

kalea turner-beckman: [Chuckles.] Yeah.

When I offered it, I was certainly banking on more people choosing the pay upfront option than people choosing the payment plan option. And that's exactly what has happened. It's been like a perfect blend of people paying in the way that they can. And it's a viable way for me to offer, which is great.

And the other beauty of these pre-order plans like sock club and the advent calendar, hopefully the advent calendar will be like an ongoing, yearly thing too, is that they get released in the like retail dead zones for yarn

ash alberg: Yeeaahh.

kalea turner-beckman: Like, no one's buying much yarn in March. There's the craziness of September through December. Then in January you get a bit of like people spending Christmas gift cards and maybe purchasing extra yarn to pair with the yarn that they got as gifts to make full projects and stuff.

And then that really dies off through February and March. So if I'm able to release sock club, then that helps me get through a really difficult part of the year.

ash alberg: Yes.

kalea turner-beckman: And the same thing happens in the summer that like people buy a lot of yarn through April, May, June, they're stocking up for their vacation knitting, and then they all go off ...

ash alberg: Go to the cottage with no wifi.
kalea turner-beckman: ... in July and August. And no one's buying yarn in July. So hopefully

the advent calendar will release then. And that'll also help smooth me through ... ash alberg: Nice.
kalea turner-beckman: ... that slow patch of business.

ash alberg: Yup. Good. Okay, so this is definitely going to be a two-episode show. So let's round it out.

kalea turner-beckman: Yeah. Ready for the question.
ash alberg: What do you wish that somebody had told you when you were younger about

magic or ritual or spellcraft or spirituality?

kalea turner-beckman: I wish that I figured out sooner that I could blend Christianity with paganism. I think growing up, I saw my parents very rooted in ... on two sides of the road spiritually. And it felt like an either or. Or something different.

ash alberg: Right.

kalea turner-beckman: Like an either or middle, but mashing them together never occurred to me until fairly recently in my life. And I wish that I had known that when I was studying at St. Andrews, because I studied sustainable development and philosophy, and that was another place where these two quite different disciplines had trouble speaking to each other.

The philosophy department at St.Andrew's was like centuries old. John Stuart Mill had been a rector of the university in his day, very rooted in Western analytic philosophy. Lots of logic going on, did not acknowledge the more like circular, friendly philosophies of continental philosophy. Not a lot of feminism or like anti colonial thought. It was just like very old school, British philosophical tradition.

And the sustainable development department was like really pushing boundaries and trying to move into the future and started drawing on Foucault. And the philosophy department was like, “We don't talk about Foucault.”

[Both laugh.]
ash alberg: Great. Helpful. [Snorts.] kalea turner-beckman: Yeah.

Yeah and ... but there was also like a very science-y focus in sustainable development. There was lots of field trips to see the wind turbines and talking about climate science, which was cool. But I was really interested in environmental ethics and thinking about the whys and looking at the ways that capitalism is destroying the earth and how the philosophies that we use to live our lives and build our societies are the root cause of all of these problems.

Like we can build as many wind turbines as we want, but until we break down this cult of perpetual growth, we're never going to solve the problems. And so I just, I reached a wall where I realized that there was not a single person in the university who could supervise a dissertation in environmental ethics, and I just had to give it up.

And I like later on took a course in environmental philosophies through Athabasca University, just for fun after I graduated to round out that part of my education that I feel like I missed out on. But looking back the place in the university I should have gone to was the divinity department.

ash alberg: Yes.

kalea turner-beckman: But I was like ... I so had such a pagan stick up my ass that I was just like, I’m not a Christian, not interested in listening to anything the Christians had to say. I was getting enough Christianity in church choir.

ash alberg: Yep.

kalea turner-beckman: We had one lecture in sustainable development from someone from the divinity department who touched on ethics. And I wrote one of my papers for that professor and did really well. And I now kick myself, looking back on it, that like, it never occurred to me to go back to the divinity department and find someone to talk about environmental ethics, even though I'm sure they would have been more open to it than the philosophy department.

ash alberg: It's so funny though, because it's, yeah, I'm the same ... like the idea of people who like, go to divinity school, I'm like, why the fuck would you do that?

kalea turner-beckman: Right?! [Wheezes.]

ash alberg: And yet the way that they learn at good divinity schools ... of course, like, there's ... there ... and I think also to be fair, there's a difference between divinity schools and then religious schools. There, there's quite a big difference.

kalea turner-beckman: Yeah. Yep.

ash alberg: And it's the divinity schools that are really good at looking at questions in very open, holistic searching ways. And it makes me just think of like, The Real Question podcast, which I love so deeply. And they use divinity at liturgical practices to look at other questions in our lives and they ... and the texts that they use and the source material that they use to do their analysis is frequently secular - mostly secular frequently modern - and it's ... but it's the way that you ask the question.

It's not that it then needs to be somehow related to religion or theology, but, and maybe that's the problem or the trick of it is that divinity does not equal religion ...

kalea turner-beckman: Yes!

ash alberg: ... but it is a practice that is, was afforded to theologians over so many centuries and millennia. Because they were the ones that were given the space to ask those questions and they were learned, and frequently those people existed within the religious compounds.

Like the ...
kalea turner-beckman: Yeah. And it, it ends up being more of an applied philosophy. ash alberg: Yeah. Yes.

kalea turner-beckman: More of a philosophy of life and of living and of the good life and of ethics which is different than the Western analytic philosophy department that I encountered at St. Andrews. I wish ... I wished that I had been open to the divinity school ‘cause I might've had a really interesting learning experience there. But also similarly I wish I

had known as a younger person that there's so much culture bound up in religion and spirituality as well that is, is accessible without believing in the religion.

That ... I think this is something that Christians or like post-Christians do a lot. Like they reject Christianity and just reject the whole thing. Whereas I see through Yaroslav and other people I've known in Jewish communities and Muslim communities that there's this idea of being culturally Jewish, even if you're not religiously Jewish. And I know that there's a whole complicated history there that I don't know about, but I wish that there was more, more talk about that in Christianity. That like, recognizing how much of it is embedded in our culture.

ash alberg: Yes!
kalea turner-beckman: But there's so many ...
ash alberg: The national holidays are overwhelmingly Christian holidays.

kalea turner-beckman: Right?! Yeah, there’s so much of it that it's in, that's embedded in our culture that we don't think of as being connected to the religion. And we also treat the religion as if it's unchanging, whereas culture is moldable and that ...

ash alberg: And consistently changing.
kalea turner-beckman: Consistently changing!

And sure, there's tons of history of the Christian Church that I hate, that I feel super uncomfortable with. I don't feel comfortable calling myself Christian. There's all sorts of stuff in there that's horrendous.

But I've been toying with the idea for the last few years that it's maybe more useful for me to engage with it, to stay in that community, to change what it means to have belief in this community and to grapple with that history in an honest way. To not just run away from my white guilt feelings about residential schools and really look at that history and how those religious beliefs made things like that happen, and how can we change those beliefs in that culture so that it doesn't happen again?

ash alberg: Yes. Yeah.
kalea turner-beckman: ... is potentially more revolutionary than just saying “I'm not a

Christian” and running away.

ash alberg: Yeah. Yeah. It's so interesting. And I find it really interesting when people are able to mold multiple things together. And I think more often than not, that actually happens, we just don't necessarily hear about it on grand or like on larger scales specifically because it's often very individualized in terms of how those things are molded together.

But the way that Catholicism in both the Southern hemisphere and also in Eastern, Eastern Europe is very much overlapping and cross-pollinating with then the pagan and/or traditional and indigenous practices. It's very embedded. And it just like, depending on the angle of the

lens that you look at it through, then it looks more Catholic or less Catholic or more, like good or evil.

If you're going to use those terms or something that is acceptable until it's not acceptable, and there's ... it's a little ... the prism just tips one way or the other a little bit, one way. Yeah, I think it's interesting. And I think, especially as somebody who ... I don't do organized religion, I ... for a lot of reasons, when people who exist in bodies that have been traditionally trampled by religions, which realistically is most bodies, I am always very interested when they are able to reconcile some aspect of it and in a way that feels good and healthy for them rather than traumatic.

Because there's definitely folks that like, you stay in it because it, it's basically Stockholm syndrome. The trauma is just part of your everyday existence. But for the folks who have removed themselves from it because of the trauma and are able to come back into aspects of it in a way that feels nourishing and fulfilling for them, that's an intersection that I'm very interested in hearing more because it's an intersection that I don't know that I have that capacity for myself.

kalea turner-beckman: Yeah. Yeah. I see that a lot in the church that ... well, I haven't been active in for the last year ... [Both laugh.] But the choir that I would be singing in, were we not in a pandemic, because the United Church is so open, and the specific United Church that I sing at is very intentionally affirming of LGBTQ+ identities, there's ... there's a lot of people like myself who have grown up around the United Church, who don't fully identify as Christian, but find some part of this community like, familiar and comfortable and fulfilling.

And there are also a lot of people from other Christian backgrounds who are going through this process of ... of reconnecting with a spirituality that really trampled them. And that's beautiful, to have friends who are opening up to their spirituality again in this safe space that we've created. Yeah.

ash alberg: That's a really beautiful spot to stop, I think. [Both laugh.] Especially ‘cause this is going to be a two episode show [Sing-song voice.]

kalea turner-beckman: In what world were we not just going to talk for two hours? [Both laugh.]
ash alberg: I think it's been overdue personally. Yeeeaah.
kalea turner-beckman: Yes. Oh, it's 4:30.

ash alberg: So this will be a really long double episode, which I am not sure yet whether I will release both on the same day possibly or just in two parts.

So if you really want to binge through the whole thing, you can, I like that idea. I don't necessarily want to hold part of it back. Full context is nice if you want it. But yeah, I think that we have touched everything plus extras. And I will make sure that people know where that ... where they can find you.

But if people want to find you, Kalea, where can they find you on the interwebs?

kalea turner-beckman: My website is kaleatheluddite.ca. And you can sign up for my email newsletter there, which is where I inform people when the shop updates happen or when I'm releasing special things like sock club or the advent calendars. That's the first place to reliably find out about stuff like that.

And I'm also active on Instagram, @kaleatheluddite.

ash alberg: Perfect. Thank you, my love. Everybody should go and follow you and enjoy more things and also enjoy the lovely local colors that you get from the ravine. And thanks. Thanks everybody for listening and for sticking with us through our extended chat.

kalea turner-beckman: Yes! Thanks for listening to this ramble session of important nerdy thoughts.

ash alberg: Yeah. Which is the way that we perpetually have conversations and that I love so much.

[Both laugh.]

kalea turner-beckman: Yep. Thank you for having me, Ash. I'm honored to be in this first batch of interviews for this new podcast.

ash alberg: Thanks for trusting me with it. [Both laugh.]

[Upbeat music playing.] 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 via your favorite podcasting platform.

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