Ha. Did you see that? I came up with a mouse!!! ~:>
Murphy comes home in two weeks and three days. I just had a sort of vision of me, two years ago, reading these words as I write them now, in the future. For a second, I felt really weird. What if somebody could tell us with full knowledge: you will worry about your kids, and the river in the back yard, and the economy and tornados and cancer and all the rest of it, but thirty years from now, I promise you—things will really turn out to have been pretty much okay, in part because you were careful, but also because not everything bad happens to every person all the time; just don’t have wasted precious time and energy on over-worry. Don’t spoil those years that way, missing what you could have had of peace.
But that’s not what I wanted to write. In fact, it’s not close.
I wanted to say this: how amazing is it that you can take a line of matter – matter organized into a linear structure – and I am thinking of yarn here, specifically – and work with it till you can form a fat little, three dimensional thing out of what is virtually one long line.
From almost the beginning of time, people have been doing this. Taking wool or cotton or even some dog hair, pulling it into a line, then—through a series of knots of interlocking loops—making of it clothes or tents or toys or hats or any number of unexpected things. Knitting and crocheting – those are the interlocking loops – lace-making, macramé, weaving—even, in some ways, felting. Look at what you’re wearing. Unless you happen to really dig molded plastic armor or treated animal skins, at this moment you’re absolutely covered with interlocking lines in loops or weaves or knots.
Isn’t that weird?
I am a dilettante sort of knitter (as I am in all things I do). And definitely an end user; I am not like my earth mother friends who actually own sheep and/or gather wool and dye it and spin it into wonderful things. Which brings me to today’s WONDERFUL THING: this is what I just got from Anna M, my exchange partner in Linda and Heidi’s Share the Love Swap. (So not EVERY mysterious and wonderful package that comes to this house is for Chaz!)
My first impression of this treasure was Japanese Lunch Box.
But look what popped out of it. HAND DYED AND SPUN WOOL. Wonderfully crazy wool. Magical surprise wool.
I am SO NOT WORTHY.
Look at this craziness – all the textures and unexpected elements. Fascinating even just to look at. We kept examining it – “Look at this – no – WAIT! Look at THIS!!”
Don’t you just wish these colors actually did grow on trees, all at once, and in these fat threads?
The breeze took this away from me just as I shot, so I lost the sharp edges, but the color just glows in the light. I WANT TO EAT THESE COLORS.
And this gray. Lumpy, mystical gray—I kind of wish my hair looked like this. But see the egg? This skein is studded with eggs.
And this little thing, festooned with hearts, and all those subtle colors spun into it.
Now, what am I going to do?
I’m not good enough or creative enough or funky enough to look at this yarn and say, “Yow! I’m going to (fill in the blank) with this!!” Because it all scares me. One of a kind. Knock your eyes out. WHAT IF I MESS UP?????
Intimidation.
But Anna – thank you, thank you, thank you – how did you EVER find the time to do this?
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