the Village Knittiot

I would love to stay and chat, unfortunately, you’ve caught me in the middle of obsessing and I really have to go pay attention to my spinning wheel. I have been trying to get at my spinning wheel since Rhinebeck (are you still talking about that?!?). My brief encounters with a couple of spinners had a profound impact on what I imagined my process to be. Sadly, life and many other crazy elements have made it nearly impossible for me to find the time.

But this weekend, I just sat down in the spinning corner of my living room and, well, it was like magic. I mean, I have enjoyed spinning. And I thought I knew what it was that made spinning amazing, but really, I had no idea. You see, I’ve been slowly making my way through this pile of merino that seduced me with its softness *last year* at Rhinebeck. Do you hear that? Last year! Needless to say, it’s been slow going. I’ve been working on finding my rhythm, but it just hasn’t come to me. There have been brief, shining moments, but also many stops and starts.

One of the women I spoke to at Rhinebeck pointed out to me that the fiber length of merino is so short and the fiber itself is so fine, that it can be troublesome and occassionally frustrating. She said to experiment with some other materials. Okay, I thought. Just as soon as I’m done with that merino, I’ll delve into other stuff.

So, as I was sitting there Saturday morning, fighting with the merino, trying to make it behave like lace weight, I decided I’d had enough of merino, that I was realy in the mood to work on something else, so I picked up the natural white rovings that I had bought at Northwinds this past spring and went to town. Everything in that moment changed for me. I was a mad woman. I couldn’t put it down. My wheel was whirling at a furious pace.

Finally, after a couple of hours at it, I decided that I needed to get up and do some chores around the house, and as I was washing dishes or putting clothes away or straightening up the kitchen table, I swear I could hear the roving talking to me from the other room. It became a game. How long could I stay away. I’d do something for an hour then say, okay, I’m going to spin for 20 minutes. 60 minutes later, I would force myself to stand up and go do some more work. An hour later I was back again, then that time became 45 minutes later and 30 minutes, until I just gave up all pretenses of house work and spun the afternoon away accompanied by the sounds of our local public radio station. Ah, bliss.

Later in the afternoon I had to go to the grocery store, but according to my new method of time calculation, I figured my day’s schedule would allow for 7 minutes of spinning. If I spun for 7 minutes, I could still leave and be on time to grab groceries and pick up Mr. Knittiot from work. I finished with the groceries earlier than I anticipated, so I drove back home to “drop the groceries off” and spun for another 4 minutes before I absolutely had to leave.

In the evening we cooked dinner together. I moved my spinning wheel into the kitchen when my half of the chopping and cooking was complete. I kindly reminded my husband not to trip over it when he came down to fetch the coffee in the morning.

The thoughts in my head right now sound a little bit like this…

“Spinning. Yes, spinning. Alright, if I have to be to work in 2 hours, I need 12 minutes to get there, 3 minutes to walk to the building. If I skip eating breakfast at home and just take it with me, I can save 7-10 minutes. I’ll shower fast, which will save me another 7 minutes. If I stop typing this damn entry soon, I can save another 30 minutes. Skip editing and don’t bother with coherency and I have another 25 minutes. That’s a lot of spinning. Maybe I should just call in sick today. No, that won’t do. Maybe I could bring my spinning wheel with me so that I can spin when I have some down time. What down time? Right, good point. Maybe I should bring it anyway. You know, just so I can look at it.”

Anyway, you get the idea. I’d show you pictures of what I got done, but you know, that would take at least 9 minutes and that is 9 minutes that could be spent spinning.

Just to give you one final indication of how far off the deep end I seem to be hurtling, yesterday morning as I was sitting in the kitchen spinning away (I had gone down to get a cup of coffee, saw the wheel, sat down and proceeded to spin for two full hours without really realizing it), I suddenly remembered that it was the day of setting back the clocks and a broad grin spread across my face. One whole free hour of spinning, I thought to myself.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 31st, 2005 at 6:40 am and is filed under this Random Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.