The art of Alchemy

I've always thought of myself as a weaver. As obvious as that sounds... hear me out. I'm talking about even before I started tablet weaving. I've always been creative. From.an early age I wrote stories and poems. Weaving the words together to create meaning and feeling. I've even written a board game or two, putting ideas together to create clear objectives and strategies. I've recently finished a book series called "The Accidental Alchemist" and it's made me rethink my previous sentiments. The book follows Zoe Faust. A 300 year old alchemist and former student of the famous Nicholas Flamel. Zoe accidently discovered the Elixir of life. Alchemy (for those that don't know) is described as follows: "a medieval chemical science with the goals of changing less valuable metals into gold, discovering a single cure for all diseases, and discovering how to live forever." Put plainly, it was believed that alchemy could be used to turn lead into gold and could produce the elixir of life, which would make the user live forever - or at least longer. "The Accidental Alchemist" series does mention the above forms of alchemy. It describes it as "making the impure, pure through Transmutation", and it talks about many different branches of alchemy; including metal, plant, paint etc. The concept within the book is that as long a person is taking an ingredient (or multiple) and transforming them from one thing into another, it is a form of alchemy. A prime example in one of the later books, Perenelle Flamel uses plants, rocks and other ingredients, extracts their pigments to create her own paints and with them creates master pieces of art "Taking an impure substance and making it pure". The main character Zoe grows her own plants, and then harvests them to make her own herbal tinctures and remedies. The alchemy process is long and requires the alchemist to poor in their energy and most importantly, Intent. The idea is the transferring of energy. That energy will linger in the finished piece and invoke the emotions used to create it. A painting created out of love and happiness will inspire love and happiness when viewed. A painting made with negative intentions or hate, will inspire that when viewed and so on and so on. For a long time, since I have been confident in my weaving ability. I have been drawn to natural yarns. 100% wool, 100% cotton, 100% silk etc. Can't be doing with plastics and acrylics anymore - yes they are cheap, but expense or lack there of has never been a focus for me anyway. But whilst I read the book I had a lightbulb moment. Why can't I take my craft further? At the moment I'm buying pre-spun and pre-dyed material and deciding what to make based on what colours I have left. But what if... I learnt to spin wool, and cotton and silk? What if I could learn to dye the wool or cotton or silk that I spun myself, using plants and other natural ingredients. In an ideal world I'd be able to keep sheep and cotton plants and could harvest the wool and cotton myself, but I simply don't have the space. So I'll have to settle for buying in the raw wool or cotton to spin. Imagine how amazing that would be!!! To have someone come to me with a project and me take the raw materials all the way to the finished weave. Pouring in my intent and love into everything I do. Personally, I'd say this would qualify as an Alchemist, wouldn't you? In any case, this is exactly where I want to get to. One day I'm determined to include all of this as part of my weaving process.