Thank you Grandma!

I have always been fascinated by folks who create with their hands—I can sit for hours and watch. I love it all, but I have a particular passion for handcrafts that involve textiles. It started with my grandma teaching me how to embroider when I was 7 years old or so. How simple and yet how incredibly special, this process of adding colored thread (and sometimes beads) in different shapes and patterns, that can take a simple white pillowcase and transform it into a uniquely beautiful space on which to lay one’s head. I still embroider a pillowcase from time to time, although I’ve added cross-stitch and Japanese embroidery to my skill set. But I always remember how this passion started and I say in the most heart-felt way I can in print “Thank you Grandma!”

I’m not an expert knitter by any stretch, but I have seen some beautiful pieces that inspire me to get better. I can knit a scarf and have taught my daughter the basics. What I was really itching to know was how the whole process worked, from raising a fiber animal to spinning the fiber, to knitting a beautiful shawl or sweater. I had grand dreams of owning alpacas or llamas, shearing them and using their fiber to spin and then knit wonderful creations. Today, I am the proud owner of two twin hair sheep ewes that I believe are St. Croix (Penelope who is white)/St. Thomas (Petunia who is white and black)…and they have rubbed their itchy wool off onto the fence that encloses their area. Ah well, they are young and haven’t been tamed down to much human handling. While at a Celtic festival last year, I fell in love with Shetland fiber—I bought a ball of soft roving that was a beautiful oatmeal color, and most importantly, it didn’t make my husband itch. So I talked to folks on how to raise them in a healthy environment and decided to give them a try—I have twin gals that will be coming to the farm in late November.

Now I have the task of getting up to speed on how to take the fiber and knit it into a wearable item. Lo and behold, I found an actual spinning and weaving guild in the town near where I live. I contacted them, was invited to attend a monthly meeting, and during that meeting I ended up becoming the web mistress for the Guild’s website!

In addition to revamping and updating the Guild web site, I decided to add a journal blog that chronicles my experiences as a beginning spinner and weaver. I know there are folks out there that are in the same place I was in a few years ago: desperate to express themselves in a creative way but having no time to even learn how to go about it. Now I do have the time and I have found folks that will point me in the right direction and give me sound hard-won guidance as well as a husband who doesn’t mind the times when I’m obsessively picking sticks and hay out of a freshly washed and dried fleece.