Even while guarding sheep, most of the dogs I saw in Greece were sleeping in the shade. They would roust themselves to “woof” at us as we passed them (to show they were taking care of their sheep), but if we weren’t very clearly offering food of some kind, it seems like the most we got was the occasional eye roll.
That got me to thinking about the whole idea of why one wouldn’t disturb a dog. Of course I had to look it up once I got home, and it seems that the earliest “in print” reference comes from Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troillus and Crisedye (1380), “It is nought good a slepyng hound to wake.” Apparently its common usage has shifted somewhat from “leave well enough alone,” to “don’t fix what ain’t broke,” which I think has quite a different tone. In either case, it seems to me that we have reached a point in our society that so much is broken, bent, or damaged, that we need to wake the dogs, and get them to do more than the unenthusiastic “woof.”
I am specifically referring to my own reaction to Greta Thunberg’s speech to the UN General Assembly last week. It was so full of passion that my heart was literally in my throat as she warned us that if we aren’t taking action, we are part of the problem. I agree. I have taken small steps to improve my impact on the planet — solar panels, a hybrid car, aggressive recycling and reduction in the use of plastics — but I’m also well aware it is nowhere near enough.
It’s one thing to say that the earth is on fire as month after month the temperature goes up. That is hurting some people — the poor disproportionately — but it isn’t hurting the power brokers of the west sufficiently to get them to act. It must be treated as an emergency…and that is very hard for us to imagine.
We are past the tipping point, and as Greta warned us, if we leave fixing the mess to her generation, we will not be forgiven. I don’t often think about my individual legacy, but it does feel rather personal to know that I, along with everyone I know, are likely to be remembered as the ones who sat by and let it happen.
I’ve heard it said that the earth doesn’t care whether or not you believe in climate change. That certainly is true. But it is not just climate change that we need be concerned about. It is the bigger picture of resource decline and over population that must also be part of the discussion. Every time I go to the grocery store I think about all of the resources that went into a can of beans and a bag of flour and I worry about our compulsive consumer society. I too am part of the problem, and find myself throwing up my hands because I usually feel like I can’t make a difference. That’s frustration speaking.
So as tempting as it is to let the dogs lie, I am urging you to action. Take more public transportation, eat vegan several days a week, walk places when you can, turn off the extra lights, wear more sweaters in the winter and leave the heat low — see you knew I’d get around to talking about wool/sweaters/knitting at some point!
My project of the week involved working with Jämtland wool; both commercial and hand-spun. It is wonderful to work with being both soft and a little “sticky,” with its fibers tending to stick out here and there. That makes for even stranded color work as the floats tuck nicely in behind. In the post Spinning I wrote about these sheep as well as the spinneri where the yarn was produced. The yarn weight is right on the fingering/sport line (with the brown at 19 wpi and the grey at 18). The headband was worked on a US 4 (3.5 mm) needle so that I would keep the stitches a little loose and prevent the strands from pulling.
I’ve named this one Lisa, for one of the ladies in my knitting/spinning group, because she does absolutely beautiful colorwork (among other things. The pattern will be available in my book (and probably Ravelry) at some point.
I’m also test knitting the Jämtland yarn that Josefin Waltin spun and sent to me. At 20 wpi, her 2-ply was slightly thinner than the Yarns & Barns production. Her “complaint” about the fleece is that the fibers are so regular and even that spinning is a little boring, and doesn’t produce a yarn that has the characteristic variations of handspun. Even more interesting to me was that the commercial yarn actually had quite a bit of “character,” due to occasional slubs, slight unevenness in the plying, and some breaks in the plys themselves.
Because of the quality of Josefin’s spinning, I can’t tell any difference between this swatch and the one I did of the Yarns & Barns commercially spun yarn. Given Josefin’s comments, however, I’m wondering if the commercial roving might be a good one to recommend for less experienced spinners. It seems to me that the qualities that were less interesting to her — such as the regularity of the fibers — might be helpful for someone like me. I’ll let you know. The utter softness of this yarn has me longing for a sweater, and another reason to turn down the heat.