I have recently been rereading Love in the Time of Cholera, the unsurprisingly eloquent, lyrical, and often humorous novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It somehow seems appropriate to read it in the time of another plague. While that book is about romantic love (and of course, death), I have been thinking much more about other kinds of love, and more specifically about love that comes from our hands.
Pandemic confinement has turned many people into bakers. For a time it was nearly impossible to find flour or yeast in supermarkets and even online. There is a singular joy to making something by hand and sharing it with friends and family. But I’ve noticed it even more, recently, when I’ve made purchases of craft items from online vendors.
I wish I had taken a photo of the packaging of a spindle I got yesterday before I opened it, because it really touched me. I was, of course, too excited to think about it at the time, so have had to recreate it now to show you what I mean.
As crafts people, we take pride not only in what we make, but share that pride in the manner in which we present our work to others. To me, the way this spindle was packed said, “I’m really proud of my work and want you to find joy in it as well.”
Here is my poorly recreated package.
That is how I feel about writing. I think for a very long time before my words are recorded, and then I edit (sometimes over many days) to reach the point where I feel like I’ve said something interesting, and maybe even a little thoughtful and insightful. I write for my own enjoyment, but I share my writing and sometimes my photographs because I’m proud of my craft.
I am continuing to battle spinning, which is not yet “sharing the love” with me that I hope for. But, even in this long journey, there are moments of humor and joy amongst the under-the-breath curses. And, because spinning is actually physics in action, Bruce often looks at my struggles and says, “there’s an easy fix for that.” While you might think I’d grind my teeth hearing that phrase, I’ve learned that I should pay attention, because he’s almost always right. [NB: you can learn about his frequent genius insights here]
I’ve had such problems with over-spin that even trying to treadle slower and draft faster, I had to resort to a gigantic extremely slow whorl to get reasonable yarn. I finally got to the point last week where that whorl (I refer to has my training wheels) was too slow, so I put back on the medium whorl and began again. MISTAKE! I was back to over-spun mess, and frustration began to build up. Bruce said, “treadle slower!” After giving him the hairy eyeball and saying through clenched teeth that I was going as slow as I could without the wheel getting a very unbalanced rhythm, he said, “there’s an easy fix for that.” Voila! Weights on the wheel to provide greater drag. Granted, steel bolts duct-taped to the wheel is not particularly elegant as a solution, but it works. My drafting skills still need improvement even with this improvement, but there are fewer ugly words sailing out of my mouth today.
Keeping to my plan, I continue to spin for at least an hour a day on the wheel, plus time with various spindles. As a result, there has been a large buildup of fluff and fuzz in the living room. Since we don’t have real air conditioning, our ceiling fans have been picking up said fuzz and distributing it far and wide.
It actually reached such an extreme concentration that the fan that cools the internal workings of the TV clogged up, and blew out the bulb that lights the screen. We were watching too much TV anyway.