The Threads That Bind Us

It is with great sadness that I announce the passing of Laurie Carmody, "The Dreamweaver Lady," on Feb. 17, after a courageous two year battle with cancer.

Laurie owned Dreamweaver for 11 years, and in that time she provided a community centre for the Okanagan metaphysical community, a place where we could all come together for our shared interests and spirituality.  I personally found her a source of love, light, and compassion.  I believe she improved every life she touched.

I wouldn't presume to write her eulogy here, because I only knew her through the store, but I feel there has been a great loss to our corner of the world and I felt that people needed to know of it.

There will be a gathering of friends and family for her this Saturday, Feb. 27, at 2 pm at the Pleasant Valley Funeral Home.

Over the past couple of days, in preparation for our Spiritual Discussion Panel, Victoria, Lois and I have been sitting down and putting our heads together to determine what kinds of skills and experience we have to offer in the metaphysical and alternative health fields.  Truthfully it's quite an amazing list!  This morning, I took that list and updated our "Metaphysical Services" page to reflect all the services we therefore offer here at The Threads That Bind Us.  It's really quite impressive, and I would encourage you all to have a look at it to see what might be of benefit to you.

When you come for a healing session, we will have a checklist available soon so that you can indicate which services you would like to benefit from at that time, and we will recommend a practitioner based on the services you request!  In some cases, two or even three practitioners may be needed.

We have also decided universally, in order to avoid confusion, to make our services available for a standard shop rate of $60 an hour, or $1 a minute; $1.50 a minute for couples ($90 an hour,) with special consideration given to the disabled and elderly.  No matter how many practitioners are working at once, this rate will not change (ie. it will not be doubled if you want both Thai massage, offered by Victoria, and crystal healing, offered by me.) The only exception to this is Tarot parties, which are available for $100 an hour.

We are also willing to work on an exchange or barter arrangement.

Since it is no longer needed, we have deleted our "Rates and Services" page.

And while I'm chatting about website updates, please note that in order to reflect the increased art focus of our shop, we have created a page called "Art & Artists" to detail our fine artists and showcase their works.

Our first Spiritual Discussion Panel went exceptionally well and a good time was had by all!  We look forward with eagerness and joy to the next one in March.

Speaking of events, don't miss Victoria's Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) workshop this weekend at 10 am at the store!  Learn how to use a natural system of accupressure to remove anxiety, combat addictions, relieve stress, reduce or remove chronic pain, and more.  Only $30 per person.

Blessed be,

Sable

Five original paintings by Adele Woolsey arrived yesterday!  We are featuring four of her African series and one of her "Wall" series, actually a door called "Secrets."  We are also featuring a line of T-shirts displaying her original work.  Come check it out!

WHAT IS SPIRITS MESSAGE FOR YOU?

Join

NATASHA J ROSEWOOD

Psychic Coach*Author* TV & Radio Personality

for a SOUL TALK

Reconnect with your intuition and/or psychic ability. Tune in to your spirit, and others-dead or alive-who want to reach you.

$20

We will have both her books, "Aaagh! I Think I'm Psychic (And You Can Be Too)", and "Aaagh! I Thought You Were Dead (And Other Psychic Adventures)" for sale at the shop to be signed; please indicate if you would like copies ordered in email or on the Event Wall so we can make sure we have one for you:

"Aaagh! I Think I'm Psychic" retails at $25 plus tax

"Aaagh! I Thought You Were Dead" retails at $19.99 plus tax

Both books are currently available for sale at our shop, and copies are also available to read in our metaphysical library, if you would like a preview.

For more information on Natasha or her work, check out her website at http://www.natashapsychic.com/

This might be Natasha's only appearance in the Okanagan Valley, and we are the only metaphysical store hosting her, to my knowledge, outside of the Lower Mainland! If you've ever considered the notion that you might be psychic, or ever wanted to be, this is the event you want to be a part of.

Well, after a considerable rearrangement, we have decided that we will be attending Investiture after all.  Rowean, Shanna and I will be there on SATURDAY ONLY with the shop, putting our best medieval foot forward!  Come out and support our effort!  Thanks!

This evening we went to our first ever charity auction event, hostessed by Barrita of Cotton's Chocolates (a place where we are not infrequent customers, she makes the best selection of fine diabetic chocolates in town!) who stopped in to the store to give us a personal invite a few days ago.  She runs a foundation called "Sweet Smiles" that fundraises for three orphanages in Mexico, one of which is run by a lady recently diagnosed with cancer, and she set up an event at MoeJoe's Nightclub (who donated the use of their venue) with reasonably priced tickets, and a silent auction, door prizes, and a 50/50 draw to raise money for her charity.

Barrita was this year's Woman of the Year, and for those of you who don't know her, she does a lot of great works in our community.  We felt that having been invited by her personally, and feeling a need to support her very personal cause, we would go (oh yes, and the chocolate covered strawberries she promised didn't hurt either!)

We didn't have a lot of money, but we brought some gift certificates for Reiki and Tarot readings to contribute to the door prizes, and two prints.  Some of you might recognize them; they were point-drawings of two moose, a bull in one picture and a cow and calves in the other.  They've been in the shop forever and honestly, I've had them priced at $10 a piece for months and they wouldn't sell for love or money.  But what many of you probably don't realize is that these were not just crappy thrift items; these were limited edition prints, Number One in a series of 500, by a Kamloops artist named Dan Forster (name sound familiar?  Yeah, he's actually reasonably famous!)  And for months, we couldn't have paid someone to take these pictures away!

Well, Barrita was delighted by our donations, and she immediately added the certificates to the door prizes and set out the prints for the auction.

I am delighed to report that when the auction closed, those prints sold for $75 a piece, and all of that goes to a good cause!  I guess they were just waiting for this event.  Sometimes, things won't sell in a metaphysical store because they are meant for a specific person or purpose, and this, I believe, was one of those times.  Sometimes, though, I guess you don't realize what you've got until it's gone.

On a happy personal note, I also made a bid on a personal tax return offered by Padget (who bill themselves as "The Small Business Pros," that was offered as part of a package with a travel kit from Hyundai.  My winning bid was $45 (a steal for a tax return anyway!) and the travel kit turned out to contain jumper cables, an emergency roadside kit, a cooler bag to keep it all in, flashlight, and a pair of quality binoculars!  Well, it was the tax return I was after (couldn't make a frivolous bid on any of the jewellery or the Snow White limited edition collectable Barbie or anything,) but the other stuff turned out to be a nice and useful bonus!

Sometimes, when you put good things out there, they really do come back to you, and often in happy ways you don't expect.

It was a good evening and a good cause, and our little business was happy to do its little part.  Blessed be!

Well folks, for those who were looking forward to us making Investiture, I'm afraid we have to cancel.  Because you must register in advance to make the event as a vendor, and the deadline to do that was today, we simply didn't have the available cash between the hotel reservations we needed to make, the gas and the registration fees.  January has been a rough month for everyone and based on the financial return compared to expenses at September Investiture, this is a fairly high-risk endeavour for us, one that we just can't afford to make right now with the need to replenish stock and acquire new stock being more paramount.  We'll try to come out to the next big event in the area though!  It sure is nice to be playing with the SCA again, I missed it!

Well folks, I'd like to start by thanking everyone who made the Penticton Open House a success!  It was a great time seeing all the people I never get to see!  I may make this a plan a couple of times a year or so!  Plan for me to be there in the fall for sure!

This weekend, we're doing a Fair and Open House in Cherryville at the Lodge Inn (63 Begbie Rd.)  $5 admission to raise money for Haiti, and then you can come in and see a variety of alternative health practitioners, psychics and readers, and shop with our vendors (us included, of course.)  We will be offering our services at our usual rates but we will all be in one place for you to access.  And we're coming out Highway 6, rather than expecting you to come to us!  Stay afterwards if you like at the Lodge Inn for a discounted rate and enjoy!

Next weekend, I am offering a level one Reiki Workshop & Attunement on Saturday at 3 pm.  Registration is required or there will be no class!  Cost is $22 per person, and it should take about 2 hours.

Feb. 19 - 21 we will be at the SCA event Investiture in Kamloops with the medieval period products of our store!    We won't be there until Saturday morning, however, so don't spend all your hard-earned gold Friday night, my lords and ladies!  The store, of course, will be closed on Saturday the 20th.

On Feb. 27 we are hosting Victoria Willard's Emotional Freedom Technique workshop!  This is back by popular demand and we hope you'll make it out!

March events will be listed shortly, but off the top of my head we will be presenting a Reiki level 2 workshop & attunement, another Mini-Metaphysical Fair, CWABC Ostara celebrations, and more!

We are also looking forward in April on the 14th to hosting Natasha Rosewood, author of "Aaagh!  I Think I'm Psychic! (And You Can Be Too)" and "Aaagh!  I Thought You Were Dead! (And Other Psychic Adventures)" who will be doing a talk on being psychic and on her book.  Details TBA!

We have been hard at work updating our website!  You will find a complete listing of Practical Magick classes for the next year, plus up and coming special events that we intend to attend (but for those, we're only a month ahead of ourselves).  We've added a contact form so you can reach us, some changes to our metaphysical services page, a page on Art & Artists, since we now have so many wonderfully talented artists who are making a gallery of our little store, and on the "About Us" page, you can find the first issue of our new store magazine, "The Tapestry," in a downloadable pdf format!

For those who are getting this message via Facebook, you can find us at http://www.thethreadsthatbindus.net.

Well, we'd like to thank you all for a spectacular Yuletide season!  It seems that our Yuletide events and our seasonal gifts discount brought people in from far and wide, and that's what we like to hear!  Please keep making your special orders; we take pride in trying to provide those unique items that you may not be able to get anywhere else!

In particular, we would like to thank the Lower Mainland Pagan community who turned out in droves and made our Yuletide Craft Fair such a smashing success!  I would especially like to thank Ian Sadler (Treewalker) for going to such efforts to book the venue and helping me with the door prize draw; Sam Wagar of the CWABC for helping with the draw and Pagan Pride fundraising; Pixie for regaling us with her lovely belly dance skills; Lisa Forryan for reading Tarot for us; and our wonderful merchants, Celdae, Sharleen Reid, Cheryl Price, Merina Mohr, and Charlotte Freeman for bringing us their wonderful works and for spreading the word amongst their friends!  Congratulations to all our door prize winners as well!

Already new merchants have asked to be part of the next one, and we all had so much fun that we're going to do it again in the spring!  Details will be announced in the next couple of weeks!

We're open our regular hours tomorrow and through the week until the 31st, when we will be closing at 3 pm, and then we will be closed through the weekend for inventory, reopening on Monday Jan. 3.  Tomorrow we'll be hosting our monthly Healing Exchange (all healers welcome!) and then on Wednesday we'll have our last recorded for DVD Practical Magick class, Introduction to Tarot Part 3.

Things will be a little lower key in January than they have been in December but there will still be all kinds of great events going on.  Practical Magick continues (now available by Skype to those who cannot attend in person - see our Webstore for more details at www.thethreadsthatbindus.net,) and our Paranormal Discussion Group resumes on alternate Wednesdays.  Witches' FAQ Night and the Healing Exchange will happen on their usual dates.  On Tuesday and Wednesdays from 11 am to 1 pm we will be featuring natural health practitioner Victoria Willard (best known for her work with Emotional Freedom Technique and Quantum Touch) for drop-in healing sessions, and on Thursdays 11 am to 2 pm Lois and I will continue to be available for drop-in readings or healing sessions.  Victoria will be teaching a workshop on Emotional Freedom Technique on Jan. 16 (registration required,) and Lois and I will be co-instructing a workshop on manifesting and enchanting your New Year's resolutions (details to be announced in the next couple of days, likely on the 9th or the 23rd!)  Then at the end of January on the 30th, we will have our next Mini-Metaphysical Fair!

February also promises to be exciting, with Suki Fox coming to teach her highly-successful Repatterning workshop with us, two SCA events planned in Kamloops and Peachland, and possibly an appearance at a wellness festival organized by Suki in Kamloops!

In the next couple of weeks, check our Calendar, as we intend to try to plan out much of our 2010 eventing season in advance and you will then know where we'll be and what we'll be up to.

Thanks for all your support and may you all have a Happy and Prosperous New Year!

Blessed be,

Sable