one of my stranger efforts

I had an image, of a nest made of my own writing. The nest I envisioned was lofty and soft, made from tissue-like paper - because it was a place to fall into, falling back with trust… just an image, a nebulous idea.

But then I also had an old journal, ready to shred. I’ve kept journals since I was 10 years old, and they’ve been progressively thrown out as I go back and realize there’s nothing more for me there. This journal was from the end of my college days. Important times, but apart from a few excerpts that I saved, not compelling reading or archive-worthy at this point. I wondered if I could cut it into strips, and weave the strips (using the term very loosely) into some sort of nest shape.

Strips are too wide, and much stiffer than in my imaginary nest.

That picture is from when I basically failed to keep it together, joining paper to paper with no glue or anything - I teased it all into the spiraling nest shape for a photo, but it was not an actual structure on its own. I found some flexible wire, and made an armature in a cross-hatched basket shape, to give the paper something to hold onto. Learning the properties of this paper, how this specific width and weight of material behaves, was the bulk of the exercise.

And then I spent more and more hours working strips into the nest. It was never really going very well, but each piece secured was gratifying, and the process gripped me such that I didn’t want to stop.

Yes there’s a quilt on the wall. Suddenly that happened again, too.

One side of the shape was relatively stable, the other side flaring out and constantly on the verge of falling apart. Somehow this always-almost-failing was part of the appeal to keep going. Each time that section had to be pulled apart and rebuilt, I just started over without any frustration - it was the nature of it, barely balanced, ineptly interlaced, as if I were coaxing a cloud into a shape, knowing it would shift a moment later.

I’m glad I used different colors of ink back then - made for more interesting nest-making.

Metaphorically, I think this manipulation of sliced up writing from thirty years ago was a way of holding and caring for the scattered bits of myself contained in them, seeing how they can be worked into a new arrangement, as part of the knowledge basket of now. Spending time with them rather than just shredding or burning gave me the chance to integrate what that time gave me and taught me, and to see more clearly what of it I’m letting go.

Calling it done because I used all the strips.

Also, the constant state of cascading failure may just be how things are sometimes… the patience it takes to just keep starting again with the falling apart areas, to recognize where it’s not working and let that part collapse instead of constantly patching and hoping and propping it up fruitlessly. The chaotic, untamed bits have to be seen for what they are, and maybe I don’t have the skill yet to tame them, maybe their refusal and anarchy are teaching me something that I need to listen to.

At any rate, I made this thing, over several days. Now I’ve moved on, but wanted you to see.

fundamental

“Yarn” made from strips of plastic bread bags.

An excerpt from The Late Homecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir, by Kao Kalia Yang

Grandma liked to work by the window in the natural light. Sometimes she mended her skirts…. Sometimes she used her scissors with the long handles to cut plastic bags from Rainbow Foods, from Sears, from Kmart, from Wal-Mart,... the white “Thank You” bags from the Asian grocery stores, into long strips of light brown, mostly white, sometimes red and green. In the last years of her life, she would spend hours before the window twisting the plastic strips into ropes, carefully massaging the lengths of cut plastic into the exposed, wrinkled skin of her leg. Wearing her thick reading glasses, she spent her days making bags and bags of twisted plastic ropes. She said that there were always uses for ropes in life, things to tie together.

Adding twist to strips of plastic bread bags with a Bulgarian spindle. I did this about a year ago, trying to quit wasting so much plastic. I wanted to crochet bags from it, but then would need to learn crochet.

Such a fundamental process of skill, fiber, material, joining. Someone who cannot not work with her hands, make useful things. It got me thinking. Some of us have been focusing on the fundamentals for a while now.

Like Sarah spinning coffee filters

Sally breeding sheep and cotton

Neanderthal 3 ply plant fiber cord

Jude moving from old bed sheet to temple robe

Abby explaining traditional irrigation

Spindle made from half an avocado pit and a stick. Spinning cotton from a pill bottle.

Handmade bamboo reed - sleying with commercial cotton warp acquired in estate destash.

The essence of who we are, as people, can be seen in our use of fiber. We who have distanced ourselves immeasurably in 150 years from these processes of hands, from the knowledge that grows from handling plant stems, pods, cocoons, locks of wool, wriggling lambs --- from the intelligence inherent in managing various sticks, knowing their size, weight, heft, details of purpose and potential --- how many of us have tools that are worn into softness by our hands’ continuous use? Not many, in the industrialized world. I don’t - I’ve only been spinning for 15 years and weaving for 10, and I use lots of different spindles and sticks, not the same ones daily.

Flax singles on vintage Bugarian spindles….. need more practice with this.

We can look at a culture, at the clothing and use of fibers for multiple layers of shelter or containment, and know how these people relate to their environment, how the lifestyle developed in a way that honors the processing of fiber into cloth or basket, net, bag, rope, blanket, house wall or roof. The expressions of textile making speak the essence of a traditional community.

Sweater from a Spinner’s Eden Farm fleece - a CVM/Romeldale ewe named Glenda. Bow fleece sale, Washington. Whitehorse sweater pattern by Caitlin Hunter, modified.

The modern world’s depletion can be likewise observed, in the lack of understanding and skill in fundamentals of fiber - in the assumption that clothing is a ready-made thing to be purchased, along with bags, nets, rope. Fiber needs are manufactured at a remove, by machine, with minimal human intervention, and the only relationship the mainstream modern person has with cloth is as a consumer, who chooses using money.

Money and the abstract ‘economy’ have come between humans and cloth, driving a wedge that separates us from the knowing of hands. As industrialization progressively took humans out of the equation of cloth making, even a weaver became someone who operated a complex machine, and understood not how to work with fiber and yarn, but how to troubleshoot the machine.

Hand carded Shetland wool rolags, from a Marietta Shetlands fleece. Bow fleece sale, Washington.

Getting our hands back onto the fiber is crucial. It’s the only way to really learn. Touch, handling, and practice inform the neural pathways that give us skill. It is the way back to knowing.

It starts with picking up a stick.

Coyote brown cotton from Fox Fibre, spun on Mexican spindle made by husband/wife team (found through Cloth Roads.)

Spindles made by friends, cotton and wool/silk handspun, Gee’s Bend quilts, Indian and US handmade wooden vessels.

There’s an essay in here somewhere, waiting to happen. But at this point, it’s just a collection of thoughts, piled in with some images, in hopes of taking your mind toward the small, important, hands-on things.

focus

For a while I was avoiding the word, because I had a tendency to pummel myself with it, as a thing that I failed to do. When I understood, finally, that accepting my own method of buzzing around between projects and mental states was more conducive, I stopped trying to focus, and just allowed for whatever was happening.

Spiral at Madrona MindBody Institute, Dec. 20. Much of the cedar and fir came from near my house.

But now I’m thinking of focus again, wanting to make it a touchstone, and as I helped build and then walked the spiral for a local solstice celebration, focus was in my mind. It requires a new definition, one that doesn’t exclude spontaneous expressions, deviations from the plan, or a wide range of media.

I’m still, and probably always will be “all over the place.” But I’m thinking that a breadth of possibility does not preclude focus. The new definition I’m choosing is: coming back to what is important. Focus will mean, not spinning out, not losing perspective, not letting go of intention and disciplined effort. Feeding back into the stream of This is What Matters.

Recent work in pieced fabric - see Clothscapes in the works tab.

An artist I respect very much puts in 10 hour studio days, but included in those days are walking outside, taking naps, some work online, and so forth. Work does not mean exclusively putting paint to canvas, pen to paper, shuttle through shed. It means one is focused on the work, in the grand scheme, and this is what I mean by focus.

Latest weaving going onto the rigid heddle loom. I finally found a way to sley this that is not uncomfortable, so I took a picture. Handspun yarn from Carolyn Doe <3

More and more shall feed into the work, shall be flowing in the same river, with the same general intention of seeking, spotting, or teasing out depth, strength, significance. What else are we supposed to do?