sewing and healers

You don't have to be very good at sewing to sew. Even the most rag-tag kind of stitching - short stitch long stitch straight and crooked - can hold two pieces of fabric together. Your needle has an 'eye' - the little hole at the top. It should be big enough to let you slide the end of a length of thread through the eye. You tie a knot at the end of the thread. Some like to tie the two ends together - sewing with a paired thread. Some just knot one end. You use up less thread that way with a single, but you have to be careful the unknotted end doesn't fall out of the needle! The knot keeps your stitches secured to the fabric.

It's been a while since I wrote about traiteurs - Cajun term for healers. (In Mexico and the southwest United States, they are known as curanderas, I believe.)

I don't know if this is true, but I read that traiteurs don't ask for money. They accept gifts, but not money. I read that as a traiteur comes to the end of their time practicing, there is someone next in line that they pass their skills to. The lineage alternates, man to woman to man to woman, and so on. This keeps a kind of balance in a community. Yin-yang. Once a traiteur transfers their healing gifts, their own practice ends, deferred now to the new guy or gal.