Sometimes life just seems to be spinning wildly. So many things occurring outside our ability to control. Issues fill the mind with things that need to be done, should be done, or could be done. People relying upon us for advice and physical help. Going, doing, seeing, being, helping, birth, illness, death…blend together like a tornado of effort rushing through our lives and take on a dynamic of their own often deciding a path on which you were not prepared to travel. But in reality this is life. We cannot determine everything that happens to us in our lives, but we can determine how we react to it. We learn to take the bad with the good and create the best from it.
Being creative gives an outlet to this chaos but sometimes it adds to the chaos.
Spinning helps to settle my body and mind, the constant rhythmical movement of the wheel turning fibre from mounds of cleaned, combed fleece into spun yarn twisted together and strong. The yarn may be the pure colour nature has given it or I may add dyes for riotous colour. I take the fibre, whether lamb’s wool, linen, alpaca, angora or bamboo, and let it move through my fingers to become yarn. I merely guide it and let its inherent nature become the yarn it was meant to be. Seeing the singles twirl together on the wheel is calming, but when plying two yarns together an exhilaration of excitement comes over me. When the singles yarns are twisted together to become plyed yarn they take on a new life and usefulness.
Knowing that there are sheep in a pasture being cared for by their owner who will shear them and provide fleece to be spun into fibre, which will become a garment or household item to give warmth to a chilly day.
From a mounding mass of fluffy fibre to a silken strand of useful yarn: order from chaos.
