Hooked on Spinning

In a boat down a fast-running creek,
it feels like trees on the bank
are rushing by. What seems

to be changing around us
is rather the speed of our craft
leaving this world.

— Rumi, Essential, p. 194


April 2009

I am completely hooked on making yarn from scratch.

Susan, fiber friend and neighbor across the street, said recently she was taking a week off from work to spin out some of the wool she had accumulated. We agreed that would be a good time to have an hour’s visit and some knitting & chat, which she’d been wanting to have me over for since I brought her a meal when she had cancer last winter.

So Tuesday was our day. I packed up my knitting and also brought along some of the wool I’d dyed a week or two ago with turquoise Jacquard dye. At her place she asked if she could card a bit and spin it out on a drop spindle to see what it would look like.

I’ve intentionally postponed learning to spin on a wheel until I’m done with school because I know it will quickly become an obsession. Never thought the drop spindle would be anything I had the patience for.

She took a little brush (a cat brush—she couldn’t find her carders) and carded the wool against her leg, then selected a drop spindle from her collection—a lovely filigree one. She keeps them in an upright basket. She spun it out roughly, then we folded it back on itself—which is what it wants because of the twist—“plying”—and it was lovely: tweedy, turquoise and gray.

She showed me how to do it. The rest is history.

Right after leaving Susan’s I called the Portland Fiber Gallery and yes, they had drop spindles—for $18 (!!). (My carding brushes were $55.) After picking up the boys we stopped by the fiber gallery and bought one—nice simple maple drop spindle. For the next 24 hours (with a few hours for sleep) I played and practiced; the boys helped turn it when the came through the room.

I had previously carded a lot of the medium gray wool from the Coopworth fleece (I’d separated the fleece by color—black/charcoal; medium gray; pale gray with flecks of charcoal) with the hope that another friend would be able to spin it on a trade. But that trade has never happened. So the box of carded wool has remained with me. Within a day and a half of figuring out the drop spindle I spun out 2/3 to ¾ of that carded wool.

Standing in my living room — the green nub of spring pushing up through the dark earth — drop-spindling while C&B play in their PJs and listen to music and stories — I recognized a moment that was utterly impossible while I was still wed to Facebook. There’s no way that I would have had the time, the desire, and the focus to learn this. I never expected to like drop-spindling — expected it to be frustrating — and so thought that a $500 spinning wheel would be the only way I could learn to spin, and that was out of reach.

According to Susan’s colleague, drop spindling is “slower by the hour but faster by the week” since you can take it anywhere. I'm completely, utterly, happily sold.

Package from Cisco Systems? It's Not a New Router.

"Working with obstacles is life's journey. The warrior is always coming up against dragons."
— Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape, p. 68





Still January 30, 2009

This morning right after the boys left I had an opportunity to visit with a good friend in the neighborhood. She was getting ready to head up to Camp Mechuwana for a winter retreat. We talked for a while.

Walking home I stopped at the Rosemont Market for leek, onion, red bell pepper, domestic feta, tortillas, then headed for home in between the mountains of snow from the plows, shovels, snow blowers. I was feeling a bit frightened and scattered about heading back to an “empty” house.

When I opened the door to the front porch, there was a package for me from Cisco Systems in Seattle. Usually packages from tech companies are for Jeff but this one was clearly addressed to me.

Took me a minute to realize that it was from Julie Wieringa, my former boss at AT&T Wireless, and that she’d probably shipped me a copy of her classical guitar CD.

Indeed. Also included were a lovely letter and two letterpressed books that she made — one a sweet story (illustrated) about a man and his dog, and the other a 6 x 9 letterpressed journal with musical staff pages on the left, lined writing pages on the right. And a letter written by hand in ink — she has a phenomenal fountain pen collection.

If I were in my old life, I would not find the time to write her back, but I’ll probably write her tonight. In my old life I would e-mail her, or Facebook her a reply. Enthusiastically. Lovingly. Instead she’ll get a nice letter, handwritten in ink, on stationery.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Day

"There's hidden sweetness in the stomach's emptiness."
— Rumi

January 19, 2009 · Monday
MLK Jr. Day

This day has special significance this year given what’s happening tomorrow. For the first time I get a little wistful that I’m not in Washington. Then I remember — the crowds.

Wake up somewhat grieving email. I imagine people all over Facebook plastering themselves with excitement.

I get over this quickly when our homeschool family coop happens, at our house again, with happy kiddos playing all over the piles of snow the plow left behind.

And then we get to work on the newspaper I’m helping them put together, The Blue Eagle. The kids all made badges last week out of watercolor paper and ribbon, and everyone showed up with theirs this week, and their notebooks.

Some had hand-written news stories about grackles stealing fruit or giant icicles; one had compelling photos of fishing and cub scouts on which he declined to comment. They all decorated a letter to go in the name of the paper on the first page.

Today's "internet surfing"

still Jan 2, 2009

Today's "internet surfing": Going to O'Naturals for lunch, the one in the old bank building on Exchange Street. Reading the bulletin board. Stopp[ing at the biz card and local newspaper table. Picking up whatever looked interesting. Reading that.

*

comments from Facebook, Dec. 31:
-- "Way to tailor your mental environment!"
— "You're crazy!"
— "but, what about if you need to know like the world's 10 largest deserts, or the name of that actor from 'Little House on the Prairie'??"
— "You are going to inscribe this book on clay tablets I assume?"
— "I'm hyperventilating just thinking about the prospect of no google, no street maps, no netflix, NPR podcasts, news and whatever else I dream up that I have to have..."
— "Dude, even the Amish have the Internet."

*

I'm not living 2009 without the Internet. I'm just not on it. The very fact of the internet makes it possible for my family to live in this beautiful town of Portland, Maine. Without the internet and all it's associated technologies — representing the collective creativity and ingenuity of thousands of people who helped create them — we'd be living in Sarasota, Florida. (no offense intended, Florida - I need snow!)