Our dreams recover what the world forgets.
― James Hillman
Phix's Curiosity: what sparks my interest
Watch this space to see what's sparked my interest this week. A random grab bag of delights!
What's sparking my interest this week has been that as I've been doing more spinning and weaving, I've been doing more math. I had the thought that between women's roles in agriculture, fiber work, and needing a 28-ish day way to measure time, that I'm... I'm pretty sure women actually invented math and calendars. Calendars I'd sort of figured, but math. I think women invented math.
Medusa's Garden
When you need everyone and everything around you to stop
Honestly, I've wanted time to just stop this week so I could spin and weave without the pressures of time. The times I've sat down to do my #spin15aday have all ended up being more like 120 a day. And weaving too, sort of similar. Sometimes it's really important to create the space that lets your hands be busy, but lets your mind wander where it will.
Too often I feel guilty sitting down and spinning or weaving because I feel like there are other things I should be working on... but... fibers aren't going to spin and weave and knit themselves in this house!
Ariadne's Yarn: playing with threads
What I'm up to with fiber and possibly how mythology and stories all tie together.
So far so good this year! Tonight might be the first night that I miss 15 minutes of spinning, but if I get this done soon *maybe not*! I did get the loom all warped. I have some pictures of the process!
This is the warp - it's got an outside section and a middle section - the outside is ... blue faced leister? The bag said cotswold, but my cousin said her friend doesn't raise that kind of sheep so anyway. Good solid nice wool. The inside yarn is merino. It's all so soft! It's going to be a nice wrap!
AND it turned into a nice warp after all the work I put in here...
Check it out! So far so good. Once Imessed this part up and spent way too long trying to untangle a messed up warp. That's no good, people. No. Good. At. All.
(Spoiler: This warp survives getting put on the loom, happily! Hoorah!)
Here's the next step. I usually work from back to front, though once I went in the other direction because... that was just how it went that time.
You can see in the middle that there is a slight variance in color. I'm not sure if the merino was actually run through some sort of bleaching process or not. The outer edges were definitely left natural. I like the faint contrast. The weft will all be the same color as the outer edges, so it will be more subtle as an end result.
And here it is on the loom. Yes. My loom is a triclops. You can't see the two googly eyes on the edges, but you can see the one in the middle!
It's all rolling along now. The part I like. Getting the warp on the loom is time consuming and not my favorite part of the process. There's a lot of bending over in awkward positions, hoping I'm keeping tension good enough, counting, recounting, counting again, and then?
Row after row after row after row of lovely rhythmic weaving!
I'll let you in on a little secret. There's one strand in this warp that ended up not warped correctly, so I have to hold it down (or up) so that it's with the group of yarn it's supposed to be with.
Ah well. Sometimes that's just how things are, and it will turn out fine. The thought of going all the way back to that point and everything that would need to be undone and redone, just really, I noped out on.
So that and spinning the green stuff from last week is what I've been working on lately.
Mythic Librarian: the art of arranging a life
Thoughts on ontology and ways to organize a life.
I keep a bullet journal. Several of them, actually. Some people call this a "dot journal" because... I guess bullets are too aggressive? Copyrighted? I don't know. I do know this is the only consistent daily tracking I've ever managed to keep up on. It goes through iterations, of course. But that seems like a reasonable thing.
When I started out, all sunshine and good intentions, I would write down the events for the upcoming day, and any tasks I had on my agenda. At this point, I write down the events, and have the week's tasks on the next page because there's only so many times I can write something down and not actually get to it before I start getting all, why am I even doing this!? What am I doing with my life! It gives me some sense of at least having some idea of what's coming up the next day. My journals aren't as pretty and arty as some people's - I don't use washi tape for each whatever's borders.
It's possible I have a thing about calendars, day planners and journals. I have really good intentions to sort of combine most of this into one, but... who wants to accidentally lose personal stuff at work so I have a work one, and I have a journal I like so I keep my written journalling in that one and then the bullet journal is separate, even though the whole idea is to keep everything in one... whatcha gonna do though? So many options!
With love, and structure, and organization, and curiosity - may Ariadne's ball of yarn guide you through the labyrinth safely until next time!
--Susan