So I have spent the evening clawing back some dignity after the lemonade debacle. I added citric acid in the end, which gave the stuff some bite, but it hasn't dissolved properly and so one bottle is going to be far more tangy than the other! Oh well. It was a lesson. It was my choice to continue with the post, even though it showed me in a bad light, because I think it is important not to take yourself too seriously. I'm no domestic goddess. I'm a human being in training. As someone very dear to me once said: "in this life we all die beginners".
It has been a trying evening (no, not the lemonade! I mean personal stuff, like being hounded out of every room by a manic flatmate) so I got the spinning wheel out. The wheel (should it have a name?) has been languishing in disuse for the last nine months, and I really don't know why. As soon as I got my foot on the treadle and some fleece in my hands, I relaxed. It's as if I were transported somewhere else, and my focus on the task was complete.
I've started spinning some lovely fleece. It's 17.9 micron Merino, which is as fine as Cashmere, and a monkey to get it to stay on the bobbin. It needs a lot of twist, and if I don't have my next rolag lined up and ready to go, I end up pulling off the entire length I have just spun as it comes apart in my hands as I thread it back through the orifice to attach the next bit. It's highly absorbing. I'm ending up with about a third of the fleece on the bobbin, a third as waste (claggy, twiggy, matted mess) and a third as noil. It's tempting to combine this last third of fluff with the carded fleece and roll it all up into a rolag, but when I do it comes back to bite me on the bum. The rolag disintegrates and I have to unreel the whole of the previous section piece by piece trying to get a strong join.
I hope this means I am learning a lot!
I'm learning that carding fleece isn't just about combing out the tangles, it is about separating the vegetable matter and the nubbly matted bits from the loose strands, and then further separating the short strands from the longer ones. I'm learning that a scrap of suede wrapped round my thigh saves wrecking yet another pair of jeans with the metal teeth of the carders!
I'm learning that the darker patches of fleece are the softest and the shortest staple, that the oatmeal bits are the nubbliest, and the white patches are the coarsest and the longest staple and spin beautifully into long, smooth singles. All of this is fun, and absorbing (it is worth saying that again and again) but what I am also learning - which is the most invaluable lesson to me - is how to relax. How to clear my mind, and to make the crap that is flying my way not stick.
It is going to take me a month of Sundays to fill the bobbin with this stuff, and with the tiny dog-comb carders I am using it takes an age to prepare enough fibre to spin for more than five minutes at a time, but I am oddly attracted to the task. I don't even have a project in mind for the yarn, but that doesn't matter. What matters to me right now is the process. Just like the lemonade, when life hands you a tangled, knotted mass of a problem the best thing to do is to grasp a handful and, little by little, straighten it out into something of value.
