the peaceful peacock

Last night I had a dream about my grand­mother, not a reg­u­lar dream but a vis­it­ing dream.  You know those kind?

We used to take rides together in the car when I was grow­ing up.  She would tell me about impor­tant life stuff that required hav­ing a teenager strapped down for awhile, unable to find a dis­trac­tion out­side of the moun­tain range ahead or twin­kling Christ­mas lights around town.  She reserved these rides for advice like, “Don’t even think about get­ting mar­ried until you’re 25,” and “You’re a but­ter­fly girl.  Pur­su­ing any career that isn’t cre­ative will suf­fo­cate you.”

She was a smart lady.

Some­times I won­der what she would be like now, walk­ing toward her last steps in life if Crohn’s hadn’t ended her jour­ney so pre­ma­turely.  I was tick­led when she showed up in a mini van, com­plete with hand­i­capped tag in the win­dow, and translu­cent white hair.  She pays closer atten­tion than I think.  We went for a drive.

Up the hills.  Over­look­ing val­leys.  To places that I hadn’t seen in a long, long time.  Places that trans­form with time, shift­ing in size and magnitude.

“Wow, that val­ley used to look so much deeper.  It’s really not that big of a drop, is it?”

“I remem­ber when I couldn’t even get all the way up that hill.”

She drove, mostly quiet but giv­ing thou­sands of words in wis­dom through the famil­iar sky­lines that we looked at together time and time again.  We sat at the base of a moun­tain, one I hadn’t seen before, and we were silent.  There was a large play­ing field at the peak, a pro­fes­sional foot­ball sta­dium.  In the gate stood a man.  She started up the road, quickly.

“Gram, you’re going really fast.  You might hit that guy.”

“Jewel, you gotta keep your momen­tum high because the hard­est part is just before the top.  Don’t stop, don’t slow down.  Or you’ll have to go all the way back to the bot­tom and start over. He’ll just have to move.”

*blink*blink*

Last week, I expe­ri­enced a pretty good set­back.  And by pretty good, I mean both sub­stan­tial and pos­i­tive.  Though I had checked, dou­ble checked, and triple checked with lots of offi­cial and impor­tant sound­ing peo­ple, I was given the incor­rect direc­tion in terms of health depart­ment require­ments and tiny empires of tea.  It seems tea is a gray area and there are par­tic­u­lar packaging/repackaging rules that require a hefty amount of paper­work and licens­ing.  These require­ments are now tak­ing up plenty of space on my to-do list.

And that means no more tea until I get it sorted out.

While I’m happy that I finally have a defin­i­tive answer and I will even­tu­ally be able to offer and pro­duce my tea blends on a grander scale, it kind of sucks that I didn’t have this infor­ma­tion three months ago.  You know, before the peak of tourist season.

Sigh.

Thank­fully, I’ve been on a lit­tle knit­ting bender.…

And I like to flit­ter from flower to flower.

It’s kind of my thing.

Not every day is full of dis­ci­plines and tidy­ing up and laun­dry.  Not every day indeed.  Some days, in fact, are self­ishly devoted to what I want to do, and appar­ently all I wanted to do for the last four days was spin yarn.

Patient Papa, strong and flex­i­ble as always, took the helm of the house­hold while I stared at the spin, spin, spin of the wheel and watched fiber fly from my fingertips.

It started inno­cently with a quick upcy­cled project using a fuzzy acrylic and some left­over choco­late brown hand­spun singles…

and moved into another upcy­cled experiement (left)…and some hand­spun wool (right)…

and that was so fun that I tack­led a cou­ple more col­or­ways in wool…

and then I tack­led some hemp fiber…

You might notice that enor­mous moun­tain of unfolded laun­dry behind the wheel there.  And you might even see the sweet lit­tle shirt with the spin­ning wheel on it that my pal Heidi made for Annabelle.

Yep, that’s right Annabelle.  Some days your mama is a spin­nin’ machine.  Spe­cial thanks to the papa and the kid­dos for cut­ting me some slack while I immersed myself in the prac­tice of work­ing med­i­ta­tion.  It was sorely needed.

handspun, hemp, merino, silk, upcycled, wool, yarn

We like the environment.

I would wager to say that almost every action we take is cou­pled with the thoughts, “How will this con­tribute to our eco­log­i­cal foot­print?  What are the last­ing reper­cus­sions?”  Our fam­ily re-uses what­ever we can, we make the choice to get “new-to-us” items rather than buy­ing some­thing brand new, and we pre­fer to walk or ride bikes just about every­where (still try­ing to fig­ure out how we’re going to load up the bike trail­ers with all the gear we need to go camp­ing with two babies…)

Some­times we trap our­selves in a lit­tle box of eco-perfection, when we feel like we can’t do any­thing with­out dis­rupt­ing the flow of the entire nat­ural world.

Sigh.

When I process wool, it comes to me in raw form.  That means that some­one gave a sheep a hair­cut, put all the wool in a bag, and then deliv­ered what some would con­sider a greasy, stinky, filthy par­cel to my open, out­stretched arms.  Per­son­ally, I think raw fleece is lovely–rich with lano­lin and touches of mother nature (aka:  hay)–but I under­stand that most folks pre­fer a tamer ver­sion of this beau­ti­ful fiber.  That’s cool with me.

So I wash the wool in a spe­cial way, pick through it to remove all of the bits of mother nature (hay), comb it to remove the weak­ened sun-damaged fibers (it is hair after all), and then card it into lit­tle blobs called rolags in order to make it easy to spin.  Some­day I will show you pic­tures of this process, but I think I was talk­ing about the envi­ron­ment today.  I get a lit­tle side­tracked when I start think­ing about wool.  Sorry.

After the comb­ing, there are a few mounds of hay-ey, crappy lit­tle bits left over.  I could spin these up to weave into rugs, but I like to leave them out­side for birdies to snatch up as nest­ing mate­r­ial.  Because I’m nice and I fig­ure birds like to be warm too.

Enter the eco-terrorist that lives inside my mind:

“What kind of effect will this have on the pop­u­la­tions of birds?”

“What if a par­tic­u­lar species gath­ers the wool, stays warmer than it should, refuses to fly south for the win­ter, and then dies because of this wool?”

I’m seri­ous.  This is the kind of crap that I think about.

So the other day I was tak­ing the kid­dos around for a stroll and hap­pened upon a fallen branch, a casu­alty of the wind­storm from the pre­vi­ous evening.  And I found this:

You might notice that big hunk of plas­tic in the front of the nest there.  And the bits of wool that I threw out into the yard ear­lier this sum­mer.  I think I’ll take my chances with pro­vid­ing the sweet birdies with wool.

raw fleece, spinning, wool

hi.

I’ve been pretty busy these last few months, what with the new baby and the sum­mer mar­ket, and my gen­eral state of con­stant crafti­ness.  but I miss my blog.  I have a feel­ing that I’ll take a big break from it next sum­mer too, but for now I am happy to return to this place.

even if it looks a lit­tle crappy right now.  per­fec­tion = lazi­ness, so if you’re going to love me you have to put up with a few warts.  for awhile anyway.

so here’s what I’ve been learn­ing to do since the last time we hung out:

and not only is it hand­spun yarn, I use reclaimed-recycled-upcycled-whatever-you-want-to-call-them fibers.  I just say I use ugly yarn and make it look real pretty.

spin­ning wool has pre­sented yet another oppor­tu­nity for me to exam­ine the small things in life–those ele­ments that are beyond my con­trol, the joy of learn­ing, the frus­tra­tion of…oh, so many things.  a micro­cosm of the uni­verse so to speak (was it Joseph Con­rad that said that?  can’t remem­ber now.)  any­way, these are thoughts that I’ve been col­lect­ing, del­i­cately plac­ing in a bas­ket to share.  my har­vest of wool and acrylic and hideous poly­ester nov­elty yarns.

and you should see the looks I get from the die-hard spin­ners in our spin­ners group when I pull out a skein of this flashy, plastic-y, hor­ri­ble yarn and begin adding per­fectly good wool to the mix.  heheh.

there will be much more to come, but for now I have to go retrieve all of the shoes that my tod­dler just threw out the front window.