Yesterday - One of Those Days

According to Donald Keene in describing Japanese tea ceremonies:

The most valued bowls for tea ceremony are irregularly shaped, and some have gold patches here and there accentuating (rather than concealing) damage suffered at the hands of long-ago owners. Asymmetry and irregularity allow the possibility of growth, but perfection chokes the imagination. (emphasis added.)

This is my understanding of the Japanese term wabi sabi. There is something very special about imperfections; they should be revered and not seen as negative in any way. And this my friends relates to my spinning of the Stormy Night roving I dyed in class this week.

All spun up, plied and put in a hank. I love the way my camera picks up the fuzziness of this yarn.

The colours really did turn out fine, although the green was a bit brighter than I had expected. Since the roving had been wet, steamed and dried during the colouring process it needed a fair amount of work to get it ready for spinning. This means it had to be pulled apart a bit because it had begun to felt. Yesterday after my post, I spent about 1.5 hours doing the preparation and spinning approximately one half the roving. It seemed to me things were going along pretty well. The spinning in my hopeful state of mind seemed to be rather consistent.

Last night I took my portable spinning wheel to Tena´s place for Knit Nite and in another 1.5 hours finished spinning the rest of the roving and plied it. It was during the plying process I realized my spinning was not nearly as consistent as I had imagined. Yet when I showed the finished product to Tena she was very complimentary. She stated something I really needed to hear at that moment, something like, ¨Well you know when you pick up handspun yarn you do not expect it to be perfect¨. And in my mind I thought, thank you Tena you are exactly right. I am not a machine; my spinning will never be perfect and it is rather silly to think it will be. It is OK to strive for perfection, but the odds of me achieving anything near it in four weeks is rather ridiculous.

Today, rather than remain unhappy with my lack of spinning perfection I am celebrating the fact that my yarn´s asymmetry and irregularity will allow for spinning growth. I am embracing the wabi sabi of my handspun yarn. Want to see what I will pair it with to make a toque?

This lopi yarn is produced in Iceland and I think the combination will make for some very nice colour work. Now all I need to do is find the perfect pattern.

Comments

Ode to the Cat

It has been six months since Mike, the cat's, passing. I think of him every day and miss him especially when Paul is away. Mike was a being in the house with me and we were close. Grieving his death has been muddled with my Dad's passing and sometimes I feel guilty about that happening. As time passes the ache becomes less hurtful for both and I am starting to get mostly good memories in its place. Recently I helped celebrate Pablo Neruda's birthday with Jami, my poet and overall very creative friend. Guests were asked to select one poem written by Neruda to read to the small group who gathered for the celebration. I picked this one: Ode To The Cat -- Pablo Neruda There was something wrong with the animals: their tails were too long, and they had unfortunate heads. Then they started coming together, little by little fitting together to make a landscape, developing birthmarks, grace, flight. But the cat, only the cat turned out finished, and

Anatomy of a Sock

I've been knitting socks for a relatively short time. One of the disconcerting things for me as I started following patterns for socks is the pattern designer assumes the knitter (in this case that would be me) knows all the parts of a sock. So I thought I'd devote a post to improve my own knowledge about the anatomy of a sock and maybe some of you will learn something about the humble yet necessary sock as well. Here's the names of the parts of the foot as I know them. #49 ankle, #50 heel, #51, instep, #52 ball, #53 big toe, #54 toe, #55 little toe, #56 toenail. There are some parts more important for this discussion; first the heel of a foot is generally used to refer to the entire C-shape from the ankle to the instep. Speaking of the instep, it refers to that curve near the bottom of the foot. And what seems to be missing in the design above is the sole which generally refers to the bottom of the foot in total or plantar aspect in more technical terms. (BTW

Yarn Barf

It's back to quirkiness and time to step away again from the cuteness for a while. But as you see I'm someone who slips from one to the other without much effort so anticipate this back and forth to be my new normal. A dramatization of me in the midst of my startitist frenzy Yarn barf . I'm willing to bet you hadn't thought of putting those two words together, had you? It just so happens yarn barf can be a reoccurring pain for those of us who use yarns that come in a skein instead of a hank. (No pun intended regarding the current Noro virus, well maybe a little pun.) Skeins of yarn wound by the manufacturer These are hanks which need to be wound into balls If you look closely at the picture on the right you'll see the start on the millet yellow skein at the centre right of the photo. Its start can easily be seen coming from the centre of the skein onto the violet skein to the left. Easy to find, right! Sure but what about the remaining 4

Flagel Knitting Files

Search This Blog