season 1, episode 1 - welcome to snort & cackle

welcome to the snort & cackle podcast! meet your host, ash alberg of sunflower knit, in today's inaugural episode. ash is a natural dyer and knitwear designer by profession, and by life they are a queer femme, fibre witch, hedgewitch, and parent to the resident coven pooch, willow.

ash helps fibre witches to connect, create, and get confident through an online community, online courses, and curated collection of products for makers by makers, all available via their website ashalberg.com. follow ash @sunflowerknit and @fromfieldtoskin and find them online at ashalberg.com and fromfieldtoskin.com.

with the snort & cackle podcast, ash will be chatting with some of their favourite fellow boss witches and witchy-adjacent professionals about how ritual and magic impact both their professional work and their personal lives. expect serious discussions about intersections of privilege and oppression, big-c versus small-c capitalism, ritual, 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 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

snort & cackle - season 1, episode 1

ash alberg: [00:00:00] [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.

Hello, and welcome to the very first episode of Snort and Cackle. I am your host, Ash Alberg, and I am a queer fiber witch and hedge witch. And with our normal episodes, I'm going to be interviewing fellow boss witches as well as witchy adjacent professionals of various sorts. And we're going to be talking about how ritual and everyday magic play a role in their work and their practice.

So. I am a knitwear designer and natural dyer by profession and I help fellow fiber witches learn how to connect with one another as well as with their practice. I teach courses, I have a couple of online courses. I have an online community where I share a lot of my favorite resources, as well as my popular Creative Coven Challenge swatching experience for knitters as well as crocheters to play around and get into the magic of their own creativity. And I also dye yarn using natural dyes and I work exclusively with Canadian sourced and milled yarns.

I live on Treaty One Territory in central Canada with the resident coven pooch, Willow, who will probably make herself known on more than one podcast episodes. So if you hear barking in the background, we will try to edit it out, but also don't be surprised if you hear the jingle of her collar.

So normally we are going to be talking to somebody else. So I'm actually going to start the very first episode with walking myself through the same questions that I would ask any of my other guests. And hopefully that gives you a little bit of an intro into what we can be expecting. We also have a seasonal book club because I am a nerd and I do love my books. And so each season we are going to read a book together.

You're welcome to read the book or not. But I will tell you what the book is so that you can join us if you want. You can join us on Instagram @snortandcackle and then check out the #SnortAndCackleBookClub. And so with each new book that we are checking out each season, at the end of the season there will be a book review episode.

And it may be me talking by myself, or I might have a cohost for that particular episode where we talk about the book. If you have feedback or feelings about the book as we go through, feel free to send them over to @snortandcackle on Instagram and I may include a

quote from you, with your permission of course, when we get around to the book review episodes.

So the seasons for Snort and Cackle are going to overlap with some of the sabbaths so this very first season is coming out for Lammas in 2021. And then we will have our next season on Samhain and then Imbolc and Beltane. And so we're just going to cycle through the seasons that way.

And each season we'll also have 13 episodes. I don't anticipate that changing but we'll see. If you know anything about me, that I am a triple Fire sign, who always has a lot of ideas on the go.

So, so yeah, so welcome. You can also expect some pretty serious discussions while we are going through these chats. Other folks, I'm very interested in the intersections of privilege and how colonialism has impacted witchcraft and how it's seen around the world. Also how witchcraft takes on a different nuance or meaning depending on where you are and where we are in history.

I, myself, have roots in Eastern Europe as well as mostly Scotland but across the British Isles in general. And so my own witchcraft practice is very much rooted in Scottish witchcraft and working with plants in the natural world. And then on the Slavic side then things get a little funnier. But yeah, an ongoing process. I have self-identified as a witch for a number of years. I have always worked with and been intuitive with the various things that now make up my practice. And there is definitely witchcraft on both sides of my family, which we'll talk about in a little bit.

But yeah, my own practice is also quite secular. I do identify as a hedge witch and I don't identify with any of the organized Witchcraft religions, I suppose, would be the word that we would use for that. I also don't work with a coven. I am a lazy witch, I often am forgetting to track what the moon is doing and I will miss a sabbath, my altar is frequently dusty and I need to remember to dust it.

And I think that's where the magic gets a little bit more interesting, right, is in the everyday magic. So how are we working the tiny spells in our life? And so I definitely do that a lot both with my herbal remedies and with my knitting and with my natural dye pots. My magic primarily exists in those spaces, in my kitchen and in my studio.

I'm very excited about our first season's worth of guests. We've actually got the first two seasons lined up already. But I'm very excited to hear how magic works in their everyday practices and how they work it into their actual work, and whether it plays a really big role or whether it plays maybe a background role in just keeping them grounded.

So definitely excited. And I hope that you're excited. I'm actually going to start us off by telling you what book we're reading for this season. And so our theme for the whole year is going to be traditions around the world. So we're going to look at witchcraft and the way that witchcraft shifts around the world.

And so we're going to start with a book rooted in Polish traditions and history. And then we are also going to look at African and Afro-diaspora traditions. And then we will also be looking at some south American traditions. And then we will also be looking at one of the many traditions that it can be found in Asia.

Assuming we get through all four first seasons, then we'll be checking out a new book on each of those. I'm going to be doing our book review episode for this season by myself. And then I will be having co-hosts who can lend a little bit more input on both the cultural and the historical ways that the other traditions have grown and the way that they look now, and also the way that they looked within the structure, the history of their own places. Colonialism across the world has really impacted the way that we view witchcraft, and I think this is what I'm interested in chatting with others about as well, is how we look at supernatural forces.

And a lot of times the indigenous spiritual practices of certain areas gets lumped under witchcraft, especially under the Christian and Judaism frameworks. Dominant religions over, again, the course of colonialism have definitely had an impact on the ways that spiritualism is practiced. And as we will see when we get to our book review episode with the Polish witchcraft, can become very much entwined in interesting ways. And so I'm excited to dig into that a little bit.

With that said our book for this season is going to be Witchcraft in Early Modern Poland, 1500 to 1800 by Wanda Wyporska and the links will be in the show notes, and you are welcome to find a copy of this book yourself. I will warn you that while the book is relatively easy to find through all the major book suppliers, it is definitely under the textbook banner, as far as price goes so feel free to find it at the library. Or if you're not that interested and you don't want to track it down yourself to read it, then hang tight for episode 13 of this season and we will do a book review and I'll tell you all about it at that point. So that's going to be our book for this first season.

And this episode is joining you around Lammas of 2021. And then you'll also be seeing a couple of other episodes from my first guests. Because why not be able to binge, I love being able to binge podcasts. And then after this first launch, then you'll see your episodes joining you weekly in your feed.

You can subscribe via whatever your favorite podcast listening app is. So go on, click that subscribe button. I'm going to go through the five primary questions that I'm going to be asking each of my guests. And that way you can get to know me a little bit and decide whether you want to hear me chat with other folks on an ongoing weekly basis.

So tell us a bit about you and what you do in the world. So, Hey, I'm Ash. And like I said, I'm a natural dyer and knitwear designer and my magic is very much embedded in both of those things. I teach both knitwear design and natural dyeing. And so you can check out my online courses, which are pre-recorded self-paced.

Take your way through as you need, if you want to binge through it, great. If you start working on it and you're like, ugh, life got in the way and you need to put it aside for six

months or six years, you can do that too. You sign up for them and they are yours to stay. My Creative Coven online design course, we work through knitwear design with the framework of shawls and socks in particular and then also all of the business side of those things. And I also have incorporated a bunch of my favorite fiber witch tools.

So there are multiple tarot spreads available through the course and I talk about my favorite crystals. We talk about routine and ritual and so you don't need to be a fiber witch to do the course, or to get things out of the course. The tools that I added in that are on the more magical side of the spectrum are really just supplements, and that is because that's how I use them myself.

I rely on my tarot a lot. My first deck was actually my dad's Rider-Waite deck. But I very rarely use it because I don't find it very intuitive to read. And most of my witchcraft is very much rooted in intuition. And so the spirit work I do is rooted in intuition. The ancestral work is rooted in intuition, as well as trying to find records and things.

And the readings that I do are rooted in that. And then on the herbalism side of my craft I use a combo of science and intuition. So I find out what does a plant do? What are its skills and what is it best used for? And then I also rely on if I sniff it, then does my body like it or does it not?

And that's how I determine whether I want to use it myself or not. And when I'm making formulas for others, then I do the same thing. If it's a custom formula then I get people to tell me what it is that they're looking for. And then also we go through different plants to see, is this plant an ally for you or not?

And I think that our bodies and our guts know a lot more than we necessarily give them credit for. As a triple Fire sign, who also has my Venus in Pisces, I rely a lot on my nervous system to tell me what it needs to tell me and what the universe is trying to tell me. So I use tarot quite a bit in my business and I also focus on, what is the energy that I am putting out into things? And then I adjust accordingly.

So with my knitwear design, if I'm really not feeling something or it's feeling stressful for reasons other than just that there's a deadline coming up, I have been known to abandon projects accordingly. And with my natural dye pots, then it's building an ongoing relationship with the plants while I work with them and having fully traceable yarns that I'm working with is also really important for ethical reasons and sustainability reasons, but also because it allows me to trust that what I am working with is something that wants to be worked with.

Healthy sheep grow healthy fleeces and those healthy fleeces being shorn by shearers who know what they're doing, and then milled by people who are very much invested in the health of the flocks that they work with, in nourishing the relationships with the farmers that they work with is just, it feels like an ongoing energetic exchange that feels really good.

But I would say probably my go-to resource would be my tarot cards. I've been known to take a break in the middle of everything and sit down with my decks and ask them questions. I do a lot of candle magic. And I use herbs a lot and essential oils as well.

So my relationship with both ritual and magic is very much more in the, how do I work you into my everyday? And I often find it really hard to make time to do really large elaborate rituals. I do them sometimes but mostly when there's a crisis point, I guess. I do make a point of, on New Year's, pulling my New Year's spread and there is some ongoing, large ritual that I do, but more often than not, it's working it into my every day.

So, pulling a card in the morning to see what do I need expect from the day, or if I'm feeling nervous about something, then grabbing my deck and asking it a few questions about what do I need to be preparing for and what should I be on the lookout for? And what do I already have at my disposal that can help me navigate this particular moment in time? And using tinctures, lemon balm is one of my favorite little buddies.

And so if my anxiety is getting the best of me, then it's remembering to take my tinctures daily and maybe replacing my morning coffee with a lemon balm and Tulsi instead just to help my nervous system and nourish it in ways that kind of bring it down from the high level frequency it's usually vibrating at.

And I would say that the easier side of my witchcraft has actually been the Scottish witchcraft, which is very much the plants and listening to what nature has to tell me, tuning into those non-vocalized stories and messages that I'm receiving. And then on the Slavic side, that's a little bit less well-known because my grandparents came over after the war and a lot of the documents were lost.

The family was lost. And the family that I've been able to reconnect with, I don't speak Polish fluently at this stage, and so because of that, I'm limited in terms of what I'm able to track down through written records and also through communicating with living family members still, at this stage.

So that's a thing that I am working on. But the Slavic side is also this side that I, for whatever reason, feel more attuned with the spirit work. Again, I'm very intuitive. There are ghosts that hang out on an ongoing basis, different kinds of ghosts, different kinds of guides. I would not say that I am a medium. My medium friends might disagree with that [laughs] but I don't communicate in any consistent language with my spirits. That's what my tarot deck helps me out with at times.

And I'm recording this during COVID, it's year two of COVID, so there's been a lot of shadow work that's been happening, which has been good. And I've been learning how to communicate with my guides in a more structured way, mostly because they have been demanding it, so there's that. But yeah, an ongoing process, I think. And I think that I will be forever learning new aspects of it.

I know that my bones respond to certain rituals and chants and songs and practices that I don't know logistically where that connection comes from, but my body knows it. It's going to be an ongoing process, I think, forever learning those things. And there's a lot of privilege also in being able to track things. On the Scottish side of the family, we can go back to the Hebrides and know the family clans back seven or eight generations.

But it gets a little bit trickier on another portion of the family's winding travels. And then on the Polish side, I know basically to my grandparents and that's it at this point in time. So I would say my relationship with it is ongoing. And we'll see, I mean ... podcast keeps going for an extended period of time, then I might have more to tell you at a different stage. I'm personally excited to learn more. I just actually wrote a book called cwtch and it's basically my step into ancestral studies through food and recipe and through small body and home care ritual, and then also through my knitting patterns.

That was a really lovely first step, I think. Or first big step, maybe. I've been incorporating magic into my practice in an informal way. I think the way that I officially stepped into it was really only in the last couple of years where I've formally realized that witchcraft is very much embedded in all of my work.

I've been also creating for four years now, four and a half years and it will come full circle literally next Beltane. In 2017, I started my Everyday Magic collections, and so my business, Sunflower Knit, began with knitwear design. Back in 2017, with Samhain I decided I wanted to make a little mini collection of patterns and then have a zine that accompanies it, and the zine will have maybe a DIY tutorial or a recipe, and then also a really simple ritual that is just all about that particular sabbath.

And so Samhain began it and I've now done seven of these little volumes and Beltane will close it out. And so the full wheel of the year will be dealt with by Beltane 2022. But it's been a long time coming and that was my first, I think, official, formal step into having the magic be very much central to the business which is a little bit funny and weird.

I've been identifying as a fiber witch for a number of years, but I wouldn't have made that a central part of who I am as a biz owner and what my business does and who I serve. I serve fellow fiber witches. It's been in the last couple of years that I've really been able to accept and claim that as this is who I am, and this is what I do. And I think part of that is because there was fear. It's been many years prior to that also where I had other people telling me, "You're not "witchy-lite.”

Witchy is very trendy right now. I'm a non-binary queer witch and I love the overlap and history of queers and magic and edge walkers. I think that we are just magical. And you look around the world and the traditions, witchcraft traditions, and spiritual traditions around the world, and queers are always rooted in that and embedded in it and intertwined with it.

And I think that's so incredible. And I think it's so lovely for us. And also is part of why, probably there's extra persecution as a result of that. So that too. It's challenging the status quo in so many ways which I love and which others do not love so much.

It took me a really long time to be comfortable putting it as a core tenant of my business, I think because I didn't want it to seem like I was trying to jump on a trend because neither of those things are trends for me. I was knitting long before it was cool. And also working with natural dyes at a time where natural dyeing is starting to become trendy.

And I love teaching my students how to work with natural dyes in a way that is, right from the get go, really embedding the ethics and the relationship with their materials, right from

the beginning. Because there is also a lot of stuff out there where you are doing something for shits and giggles. It doesn't need to be sacred. I think there is beauty in finding everyday things and practices sacred, but it also doesn't need to be so sacred for you if you don't want it to be. But there does need to be an acknowledgement of the fact that we are using the essence of different things, both the fibers that we're dyeing as well as the plants or dye materials that we are using, because it's not only plants that we use.

And we are working with the natural world and we need to respect the natural world when we are doing that. And there are some basic safety considerations. If you're going to be working with plants that you've foraged, then, make sure that you've identified them properly and that they're not toxic, that's a safety thing.

But also we're not the only things that these plants have relationships with and it is such a human trait to take things [without] asking permission or without recognizing that creatures use them too. And I think that's bullshit. And I don't think that it's okay.

I think that we need to have awareness and more reverence. At least in some little ways. Also understanding how to work with natural dyes by actually understanding the chemistry of it and the science of it is very useful. So it does drive me a little bit nuts and by a little bit, I mean, a lot nuts, how there are so many "natural dyers" ... I put that in quotation marks ... who don't actually know the science and that is fine as long as you're not trying to make money off of it.

As soon as you're trying to teach others and make money off of it and profit off of it, or you're selling products that you don't know whether something is actually colorfast or not, or how, if it's a more fugitive dye, is your customer going to use it? And have you articulated that to them so that they can be adjusting their expectations accordingly?

Capitalism is bullshit. And also is a system that we are stuck in and if you are going to completely operate outside of capitalism in the west there is a lot of privilege in that, and there are ways to fuck with capitalism. And I love that.

And I'm talking specifically big C capitalism, not small C capitalism. I think that also as a small business owner or a micro-business owner or as a maker or healer there are a lot of ways that we can really fuck with big C capitalism through our businesses and by choosing to prioritize different things than just money and hoarding it like a dragon.

I like to think of money as water. I once heard this analogy from Danetha Doe, who's very smart, and she referred to money as thinking of it like a body of water or like a river: if it is stagnant then it is unhealthy. And if it is flowing in and out, then that is what we want. And so I like to think of money as this energy flow in and out.

By putting it back out into the world we welcome it back in. And the problem is when we have scarcity feels around it. And so when it comes in, we don't let it move. And so it becomes stagnant and it dies. Water has such an incredible life force.

How do I incorporate my magic practice into my biz? In all of the ways, right?

Like you hear me talking about it, it's just part of it. It's embedded in ways that are hard for me to articulate. And then also in ways that are much more specific, right? If I am having scarcity money feels, then I need to do some abundance work. And so I need to light a green candle and pull a card from my money magic manifestation deck to remind myself that abundance is in the universe and that I can trust it.

Trust is a hard thing for me in general. A lot of times my magic is in reaffirming that trust in the universe. Not necessarily in other humans but at least in the universe, reaffirming it and connecting with it again. And allowing my guides to check me when I am going too far in one direction or when I've lost track or lost sight of my core values.

So that's what I do. My plants and my materials are the things that I work with that come from the natural world. It's building a relationship with them in the natural world, whether by growing them from seed and learning the life force and life cycle of a particular plant, or by connecting with master dyers from different traditions and learning about their relationship with a dye source that doesn't necessarily grow in my climate, and learning more about how the life cycles of these natural materials that we use are embedded in everything and in the energy of the earth and how we can connect better with those things and have more of a holistic and whole relationship with those things.

And then with my knitting, as I knit a new design, I take my inspiration from the natural world most of the time. And I also try to make sure that the energy that I am putting into a knitted item is one of love and one of joy and trust and putting abundance into it. Abundance has so many ways of making itself known in our lives. And some of it is financial and a lot of it is not. I try to build that coziness and that love into each of the designs that I make and new patterns that I create and the books that I create.

And then with my teaching, I try [to] have those things also be part of ... share with my students. I want there to be a sense of abundance and generosity in the way that I take the knowledge that I learned and that I share it with them and that I don't hoard knowledge for myself [for] reasons that don't make sense.

There's one thing between just keeping something close to your chest because it needs to be. Some things in business do need to be kept close to the chest. But when it comes to finding a new resource that's really helpful and that is helping me to grow and learn, then I want to share that with others.

And knowledge is power. And I think a big way that we are kept down by various systemic oppressions is by not having access to knowledge about things. And so I want to share knowledge. And so I do that through my crush scholarship. I also do that through the Creative Coven community, which is my online community.

Basically what I did with that was I took all of the things that I'm asked most frequently by people and I put it all in one space. And there's a paywall to it, but it's a low enough paywall that a lot of us will be able to access it. And it also respects my knowledge and my time and my sharing.

And then we come together through the magic of Zoom, which most of these episodes are also going to be recorded, and we come together through the magic of Zoom once a month to share time together, to knit or craft and share stories and just enjoy that sense of community and connecting with fellow fiber witches.

And then my physical products, I dye yarn and I make herbal remedies. It's all embedded in ritual. I think if I'm offering something it's because I truly believe in it and I love it and I want to share it with others. And then probably my biggest resource sharing would be From Field to Skin, which is my side project, where I try to highlight and connect the Canadian Fibershed together.

I think that there's a lot of magic that comes in collaboration and in connecting with your local Fibershed and also learning more about other fiber sheds and other growing systems and climates and textile traditions that maybe aren't physically close to you. I think that there's magic in being able to learn from others.

Maybe that's it. Magic is in connection.

And then something that I wish that somebody had told me about magic or witchcraft or ritual when I was younger is that it is not scary. Maybe that's it. I think whenever I encountered it when I was younger the things that were more powerful were also more scary and I didn't really necessarily learn the language for speaking to them until now.

And that's too bad. Also I think I thought as a child, and even as a young adult, that ritual needed to be this really big showy thing. And that to claim "witch" meant that I needed to all of the time know what the moon was doing and know what the seasons were and know the different deities. It doesn't need to be like that.

I also wouldn't do that if I was into regular religions. And I also don't consider my own witchcraft to be a religion. I think there's a difference between religion and faith. And I would say that my spiritual practice with witchcraft is definitely more in the vein of faith.

Everything is on a gray scale, including the gender binary, the binary is bullshit. And so I would say I definitely fall more on the faith end of a spectrum. If religion is more the side that you fall on, I think that's okay too. Right? The problem is when we use structures of power to oppress others.

And that is ultimately my issue with religion is that organized religion consistently does that. And that's not the religion's fault. I think that's people's fault, people are flawed. We try to connect with others and share, and learn and grow and leave space for people to have differences of opinions or different experiences.

And as long as they're not harming somebody else, then I think there's space. If they're harming somebody else then you're allowed to punch them. That's the way I go - do no harm, but take no shit.

So what's next for me and what's next for this podcast? Hopefully so many seasons. I have the next four years' worth of books for the Snort & Cackle Book Club planned out. So please

listen, subscribe, like the episodes, share with your friends, because I would love to get through all four of those years.

I'm really excited about the books and I hope that you are too, when we get around to them. at the very least Snort & Cackle season one will be joining your feed over the next few weeks. There will be 13 episodes this ... Season two will also join your feed. So I am committing to you for at least the first two seasons, which will take us to Imbolc of 2022, which is February.

So that's what's next for this podcast. I'm really excited about the chats that we're going to have. And then my business is currently in a stage of new growth. And by that I mean, finding sustainability and consistencies. So you will find yarn and herbal remedies and tools for makers by makers in the online shop, which is ashalberg.com.

You can also find my patterns in the online shop. If you want to join me for either knitwear design or natural dyeing, you can find my courses. I have a free fiber witch quiz that you are welcome to take as well. I am a huge nerd for Buzzfeed quizzes so I created my own. So you can try the fiber witch quiz to find out what kind of fiber witch you are.

And then if you want to join the weekly newsletter you're welcome to join that. You can follow me on Instagram @snortandcackle, @sunflowerknit, and also @fromfieldtoskin. And if you want to dig more into From Field to Skin and the Canadian Fibershed, you can check out fromfieldtoskin.com.

And if you'd like to join the Creative Coven community, then you can do that at ashalberg.com/creative-coven-community. Thank you for joining me. I hope to see you in the various spaces. If you're interested in connecting with me or asking questions about any of the courses, feel free to send an email via the website.

And I hope that you enjoy these episodes. And if there is somebody that you think that I should interview, or if you would like to be an interview guest, please feel free to reach out. And again, you can find me @snortandcackle on Instagram. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you for our next episode.

[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.