WolfWeave

Did I mention that I’d ordered myself a birthday present? (My birthday is in June.) I have been overwhelmed with an urge to take up spinning again after nearly 25 years without touching a wheel. The second half of my post on March 17th (scroll down) explains the inspiration for my renewed interest and has a photo of the yarn that inspired me, as well as a photo of my two old, unusable spinning wheels. One of the wheels could be fixed but I never liked it much anyway, so I decided that my birthday present would be a new wheel and I’ve settled on a Lendrum DT—a double treadle folding wheel, which I ordered from The Woolery. I researched wheels pretty extensively and hope I made the right choice because I haven’t had a chance to get to any store to try out the wheels in person. Right now the wheel is on back order and due in about 3-4 weeks. So far, I’ve managed to fill my time by ordering some spinning fiber–Romney, Border Leicester, Coopworth, Gotland, and unknown natural wool rovings. Even some gorgeous hand-dyed rovings, but I’m saving those for when I have some spinning experience under my belt. I sure hope I take to it again and love it the way I did back in the 1980′s. In lieu of actual “opening the Lendrum box” photos, I thought I’d put up this photo of myself participating in a Medieval Fair (one of the early ones) on the grounds of the Ringling Museum in Sarasota back in 1983 or 1984:

I’m wearing a shawl that I wove myself. Ahh—just think how good I’d be at spinning if I’d kept it up since then! Regrets?

Sorry…been away from my desk…first at a funeral and then off visiting colleges in a mad rush to see all we can before my son has to make that all-important decision by May 1st. It truly is an insane process (especially this year, if you’ve been reading all the articles in the newspaper—it’s the worst year ever for college admissions acceptances): The colleges send out their admission notifications April 1st (and not all of them publish online either) and, then, when you have heard from the 10 or so you applied to, you have to get over your disappointment at not having been accepted by your first choice (a given this year), sort through the remainder, and decide which ones merit a first or second visit. By then you have 2-3 weeks to schedule (potentially expensive, cross-country) visits to as many of these universities as accepted you…and, while you may want to visit on the school’s official “admitted seniors open house day,” you probably also want to stay an additional day to sit in on classes (if you can manage to arrange that), sleep over in a dorm, and talk with any students you may happen to know personally who attend that school. Then you rush home for a couple days back at high school and take off again to another part of the country to visit another college. It’s crazy! And so it goes until the end of April when you probably have 1 or 2 days to make the big decision. And if you are on the wait list anywhere (and you like that school), your parents will probably end up plunking down a hefty ($800?!) deposit at your 2nd choice school while you wait until June 1st to hear from your wait-listed school!!

So, that’s the whirlwind we’re in right now. I can only say that I’m glad this is my youngest son and this is the last time I’ll have to go through this weighty decision-making period. From the distance of 40 years, I know that he will probably be happy and prosper at whichever school he chooses…but I remember the disappointments and frayed nerves surrounding my college decision and I know he cannot hear me when I try to reassure him because, for him, this is one of the hardest times of his life.

Oh, and did I mention that my mother returns from Florida this Sunday?

I’ll try to get back to knitting and blogging again after May 1st (with any luck!).

The other day, a friend on one of my knitting lists commented on “knitting posers” who “love the community of knitting, the buying of yarn, but they rarely finish knit items.” Well, that skewered me but good! She went on to mention “knit blog posers:” “They rarely have knitting content to share yet identify themselves as knitters.” Ouch! again.

Then I thought about that for a while and decided to write up a little commentary in my own defense:

“My mother (yes, the one I now have care of) is a perfectionist. She tried to teach me to knit when I was seven or eight but screamed at me so much about my doing this or that the wrong way that I soon gave it up for good until about 6 years ago (heavens, how did I accumulate so much yarn in just 6 years?) when I overcame my fears and taught myself to knit.

Mom was a terrific seamstress and sewed all my clothes but would never let me touch her sewing machine, lest I break it. I had a bit of sewing in HomeEc in high school–and the teacher made fun of me for not being able to sew a straight line. We were making straight skirts and she kept making me cut the seams off mine and re-sew new seams until I got them straight…and my skirt was the size of a doll’s. I didn’t sew again for 25 years, when I bought myself a small sewing machine.

So, in the meantime, at the cusp of the hippie/women’s liberation movements, I adopted a sort of craft/art ethos and learned to crochet, tie-dye in many ways (now called shibori), embroider, weave, spin, and do basketry. Later I moved on to beadwork, polymer clay (which I eventually gave up as it became clear even to me that I would never be very good at it), rubber stamping and carving, collage, felting, and quiltart. And knitting.

So now I knit; I crochet; I make artquilts; I sometimes carve rubber stamps; I still make beadwork and wirework (jewelry and sculpture); I felt; I needlefelt; and I embroider. I want to take up spinning again. I still really need to learn to sew.

It all amounts to too many crafts, too little time. Like everyone else, I have a family to take care of; a husband, children, bills, some work, books, errands, newspapers, cooking, email, housework, tv, general upkeep, and all the other un/necessary distractions of life. And just as the teenagers are finally leaving the nest, I gain my mother.

So, yes, I am a knitter…just as I am all these other things. And though, despite my best intentions, I never seem to finish anything, I will finish those projects someday…or move on to other, more challenging ones. And I do blog about my knitting…and about all my other activities; so I guess you could say that I blog about my creative life…or the creative life that I would like to achieve.

Because, in a perfect world, I have an incredible white-walled studio with windows, unlimited storage and large clutter-free tables. I have all the time in the world to create and no distractions. Food is delivered. The telephone only places outgoing calls. My memory is intact and I can remember how to do all the knitting tricks I’ve learned. I finish all my projects and wear them proudly (with my handmade jewelry) because they fit and look fabulous. I spin my own yarn. My other craft pieces, also completed, hang in galleries. In a perfect world.

I’ll be 58 this year. Somehow, I don’t think that, despite all my dreaming, my perfect world is ever going to happen. Such is life. And this is the way my life is now:

I am an UNFINISHED KNITTER and proud of it!”

That was my defense. And so it stands…but then I thought of some more. It is said that a “true artist” will find the time to create no matter what distractions or hardships their life brings and this may be true. But I find that, especially as I grow older, I need a prolonged period of quiet and peace to gather my thoughts and focus on a project, in order to conceptualize it, to envision it, to let it grow. I need some lengthy periods of uninterrupted time to work on projects; I’m not the sort who can easily knit a few rows while waiting in line at the bank and I hate having to pack up a beading project when I leave the room for fear that the cat will get it.

And I would like a room of my own. A room that didn’t also double as the laundry room and the storage room for the treadmill; a room that everyone wasn’t always walking through. When my oldest son went off to college, he left his room nearly as barren as a monk’s cell. I gave it a couple years but then I got all excited: “Aha!” I thought. “Here’s a sewing room.” So I started to move in my sewing machine and some of my fabric carts but it seemed that no sooner had I turned my back than the room was suddenly filled with computer equipment and the long desktop was covered with computer guts and digital boards and soldering irons and all manner of spare parts. Sigh…in this household, it’s hopeless!

Isn’t it some axiom of the universe: clutter rushes in to fill a void? In our house, it’s generally computer clutter.

And so, I’m still waiting for that empty room of my own. Just as I wait for time and space and the perfect world.

I think I was waiting for that perfect world back in 1980 when this photo was taken:

I wonder if I look as happy and hopeful nowadays?

It seems this spring is turning into a traveling one.

We flew to Phoenix last weekend for family and one of those times, unfortunately, when family gather—a funeral. My husband’s uncle passed away at 94. He had been an attorney in Chicago, an avid long-distance bicyclist and, well into his 70′s and 80′s, a tireless pro-bono representative for inmates sitting on death row. Apparently he was instrumental in helping to get Illinois’s then Governor Ryan to overturn the state death penalty and release the death row prisoners.

Laid to rest in an idyllic spot on the water underneath a willow tree, Uncle Joe’s funeral was a true celebration of his life. His children and friends shared stories, reminiscences, songs, and even a little dance that evoked his true quirky spirit. Unfortunately, for me, the funeral brought up a lot of painfully sharp, unexpected and unbidden memories of my own dad’s funeral just five months ago. It was a bittersweet day. Yet it was wonderful sitting with family members we hadn’t seen in years and just talking, sharing lives again. Family—it’s what’s really important.

Then, next weekend we jet off to Boston on the first of the four college visits that have to be completed in the next two weeks so that my youngest son can make a decision before the May 1st college deadline! Yes, it’s great that he has choices and maybe we shouldn’t have left it till now (though we really had few options), but what a whirlwind tour it is going to be! College—isn’t the experience what you make of it? Once all the pressure is off, won’t you pretty much be happy wherever you end up choosing to go?

I just love this photo from today’s New York Times:

It shows a sheep being shorn of its wooly winter coat just as easily as we start to put away our down jackets, wool hats, scarves, mittens, and boots. Yes, my friends, I think I am safe in saying that SPRING is finally here! (I hope!) This was one loooong winter in Chicago but the forecast predicts several sunny 50º–60º days in a row…and, okay, it’s been raining, but at least it’s finally stopped snowing! The snowdrops and some little yellow flowers have dared to poke their heads up above ground, but no sign of anything else yet. Yesterday morning it was 38º and I started my day in a turtleneck sweater and winter coat but, by the afternoon, I was too hot…so maybe it is time to start believing in SPRING!

Meanwhile, back to our buddy the sheep: Sheep grow wooly coats, long and thick. They need to be sheared by a professional once or twice a year in order to remove all that heavy wool and for them to remain healthy—not overcome by heat stroke in the summer, not too heavy to move around and forage, not too susceptible to pests and parasites. As you can see from this photo, sheep really don’t mind the shearing and often jump up and run around afterward, glad to be free of the heavy coat they had grown—much the way you or I feel suddenly free to be wearing cotton t-shirts again without all that heavy outerwear weighing us down. A professional shearer is extremely careful to not even nick a sheep and to remove the wool in as few even strokes as possible, in as little time as possible. A good shearer can shear a sheep in several minutes.

Here’s a wonderful video (about 6 minutes long) of sheep shearing at felter Diane Stott‘s farm and studio, entitled “Sheep Shearing at All’s Wool (that ends wool) Farm”:

And when the shearing is finished, we end up with the full fleece off the sheep (who then starts growing a new one) which will be sorted, washed, dyed, carded, and spun into wool yarn. And we all know what we do with yarn, right? KNIT!

Or, to spoil a good punchline, the wool can also be dyed and carded into fluffy batts of fiber which can then be made into wondrous felt creations, as you will see if you visit any of the amazing artists on the North American Felters’ Network resource list.