handstories

spinning self

    My spinning wheel and I visited Pre-K yesterday.  They have been thinking about spiders & Rumpelstiltskin.  After talking about wool, carding, twist and spin, they each took a turn at the wheel.  One little boy dressed for the occasion.

    While sharing with them about the how and why of spinning, and of the way I came to it, I heard myself saying, "When I twirl a spindle, or sit down to my wheel, I feel like I've come home."  I hadn't put words to it before.  

    I'm going to miss the sharing and self-discoveries that come from being with a class of children.

    After I left, their teacher talked spirals and webs with them.  She shared these images of their creations.

how things can change

    This . . .

    From this (from here). . .

    In spinning yarn, there are so many possibilities.  I suppose, that if I learned enough about it and color theory, I could predict and control the outcome.  Not at all what I'm interested in these days.  

    During this time of transition, there have been lots of questions from others-  "Why are you going?  What will you do?   Do you have a plan?"  And offers of ideas-  "You could....You should...Have you thought about....?"

    I answer . . . "It is time.  I don't know.  No.  Maybe.  Maybe.  Not really."  Sometimes I just look at them silently, knowing their good hearts, and knowing it's all ok.  

    I do not ever recall feeling serene . . . but I think this is it.  

    Recently Jude left a comment that I've been carrying around in my mind like a piece of chocolate that is slowly melting into my mouth and being . . .

     "and it all formed as it might."  

    Isn't that delicious?!

on plagues and irons

    A lot on the plate right now, but a good kind of busy.  A little spinning in the evenings. 

    Working with third grade on their play about the Bubonic Plague, it's a comedy, of course.  One more rewrite, changing the King into another knight and adding another Rat (one of the top choices for almost all of them!).  And the quiet, studious, sweetest girl in the class, she wants to be the prisoner in the stocks, love that.

    Also sewing felt family trees with First graders, and stuffed wolves in Pre-K.  I had the Pre-K children help to iron fabric.  Half of the class had never seen an iron before.  I suppose if it weren't for sewing, my boys wouldn't have either.

    There was the time, when we were first married, a summer in Nebraska, when I tried to iron.  K was at his first post-college job, I wasn't working much, so I thought I'd be useful and iron his work shirts for him.  When he saw them, he asked me not to do that again, and re-ironed them.

    Original batt by LushMommy in the "Herbs" colorway, spun as a single.  Contains-bamboo, cotton nepps, merino, mohair, mulberry silk, sari silk, teeswater, tussah silk, tencel and sparkle, 211 yds. 

of alligators and wool

    I've been spinning for relaxation, in between wrestling with cardboard, paint and glue.  We are buried in it.  It is turning into props for our family singing group show in a few weeks.  A fairy tale of loss and love set to music in the swamps of Louisiana.

    The table is covered with frog legs.  There are truffles and honey drops to sew.  We open the front door carefully and step tip toe over and around the eight feet plus alligators that fill the only floor space big enough to hold them.  

    Remembering meals at Grandma's.  Mom would say, "Grandma's asked us for dinner."  Followed by us moaning, "No, please!...."  I loved Grandma, but not her cooking.  You never knew what it would be, once it was frog legs.

    There is more to tell, but I have lyrics to memorize and gator jaws to hinge.

water woes

    "It seems that boiling water is all we do around here!", exclaimed Moon yesterday.  This is because we are on day five of life without a water heater.  Hopefully, today we will have a new one.  Unbathed boys smell much better out in the woods camping, than in our small house!  Fortunately friends have shared their showers to fill in the gaps between bucket sponge baths.

    There was the mess of cleaning up the water that leaked all over the basement floor, and all of the laundry, junk, etc.  that covered it.  It did force us to go through it all, and we ended up with a cleaner space and a trunk load of donations- the silver lining, I suppose.

      Meanwhile, I have knit through it all, on this linen stitch shawl started way back when.  Calm mindless breathing.  

    And a bit of spinning, as the yarn for it is running low. 

yarning

    This is a tale of two yarns, bobbins, flyers, and niddy-noddies. 

    Too small of bobbins, filled to bursting.

    Great big new bobbins and jumbo flyer, holding twice as much.    

    Leading to an old niddy-noddy, giving way mid skeining, with a crack, under the pressure of such fullness.

    In the end there are yards and yards of yarn.

    And a shawl from the first yarn.  

     With something to come from the second.

in the laboratory

    Experimenting with more of that luscious hands+notions fiber.  

    In the last post you can see that the colors were put through the carder mixed willy-nilly.  This time I separated the colors and carded each pile alone.

    There was one more run through the carder, layering each color, one at a time.

    I'm not sure what I thought the result would be?  

    After spinning them up, I can't see that there is much of a difference.  The newest carding/spin is on top.  It does seem a little brighter, the colors not as muddied.  In this gray wet weather it's hard to be sure.  

    Anyhow, it was fun to extend the process/play.  

more process

    Santa was very generous this year- there was a drum carder under the tree !  (Thank you K.)  

    It combs the fibers into batts for spinning.

    The boys and I love cranking the handle & seeing what comes out.

     I feel that I've worked backwards through the process- first learning to knit, then to spin, now carding.  The family joked that a sheep may be in my future . . . I don't think so.  

    There are some things to learn, but being able to hang out with the fibers more, in a new and different way is just great.  While spinning this up, I said outloud to the room, "I love fiber."  There really aren't words for what all kinds of fiber do for me.

 

 

my kind of halloween

    On the eve before Halloween, Moon asked for a hat.   

     Because earlier that eve he went from this . . .

    . . . to this.

    It was his choice (not that I wasn't happy about it- he was getting quite scraggly!).  It was a part of his Voldemort costume (the bad guy from Harry Potter).  Wanting to hide his head from classmates until the afternoon party, he wished for a hat.  

    "Do you remember that batt you got last year named "Snape?"  (Snape is another character from Harry Potter)  "It would make a perfect hat for tomorrow."

    Little did he know, I had spun that batt up last fall, and begun a hat, intending to give it to him for Christmas last year, but had run out of time half way through.  Thanks to my recent steps in organization, I was able to find and finish it after he went to bed.  He was so happy and amazed when I handed it to him Halloween morning, "It's perfect!  I can't believe you did all that in one night!"  

    I let him believe I have magical knitting powers.

    P.S.  Today he wore it again, all day!

a last look

    It went off to the post office today.

        It has been a good lesson, first step, in learning to pay attention to process,

    to evaluate it, 

    and try to answer the question of worth and value.

    Packaging it up.

    Wishing I could just take it outside and let it fly on the wind to her . . .