California Odyssey Part One: Navajo Weaving

Hey!

I'm back.

You may recall that when I last checked in, I was in a bit of a funk. Not so much a funk as a period of distraction. I was not interested in spinning or knitting, I couldn't write a coherent sentence to save my soul, and I was flitting about, keeping busy doing nothing.

I will freely admit that I did plan a period of nothing in my life after the stress overdose of the past few years, but I had no idea it would be so...well...boring and crazy-making.

Fortunately for me, though, the brilliant man that I married saw this coming and sort of forced and adventure on my restless spirit. He was getting a little tired of me saying that I would write a book someday and then spending my days baking bread and folding laundry into shapes that would make an origami master green with envy. He wanted me to focus, and I couldn't focus when there were distractions like trying to find a way out of walking the dog when it's 30 below. And he knew that it would take an adventure to snap me out of my funk. So he gave me a budget and set me loose on Expedia.

I looked at The Tropics and Europe and Asia. I pondered a snowy cabin in the woods, and a spa in the desert. And I finally decided that I would go to Arizona. ("Wait!", you say, "Isn't this about a CALIFORNIA odyssey?" Yes. Yes it is. Hang in there, I'm getting to it.)

I hunted for plane tickets and vacation rentals and museums and libraries and all the things to do in Arizona. And one of the things that drifted through my searching was a Navajo weaving workshop in Canyon de Chelly. This one little thing piqued my interest in all things string that had been laying dormant for so long, and I started to hunt around for information about the tour and the instructors. This led to the discovery that the same instructors were leading a workshop in Ojai, California the week prior to the Canyon de Chelly class. A longer class, for a lower cost. A search for Ojai led to some interesting points of interest, some fibery, some not. And I found a great deal on a vacation rental in Ventura, not far from Ojai. And it all clicked. A seat sale came along, then a deal on a hotel room in Ojai. There was room in the workshop for me, and I even had that stroke of inspiration that started the book.

So, off I set for Ojai. I knew Ojai was north of Los Angeles, so I flew into LAX and hopped into a rental car and set off for Ojai. The GPS told me it would be about an hour and a half, but what it didn't tell me is that the first 45 minutes was on the busiest freeway in the known universe at rush hour. Eight lanes of traffic, all changing lanes and zinging past at light speed, and me not knowing where I was going...EEP. However, I managed to survive and get to the relatively quieter 101 and to Ventura without incident and up the now dark, windy road to Ojai.

The next morning was day one of five, and I was introduced to the basics of Navajo weaving. And I was instantly in love. I had been told once that maybe I should just accept that weaving was not my thing (and by a fairly famous weaving teacher, too!), but I had clearly just not found the right kind of weaving yet.  I was waiting for Navajo weaving.

I worked away on my little rug, loving the flow of the yarn in my hands and the rhythm of the beating of my comb...

I made mistakes and learned to correct them. I concentrated on keeping my edges straight. I made a little rug. Not a perfect rug, but MY rug...

The instructors, Lynda Pete and Barbara Ornelas, are sisters who are fifth-generation Navajo weavers in the Two Grey Hills tradition. They shared traditions and stories of their lives growing up as weavers and taught fumbling newbies like me to weave with great patience and humour. Linda was the patient soul who taught the beginners, like me and Rene....

...while Barbara worked with those in the group who had taken classes before and had an idea of what they were doing, like Steve....

...and Leslie...

...who seem to have grasped a little more than the basics.

One of the high points of my week came when Barbara was spinning warps on her mother's Navajo spindle for our warping workshop...

Well, technically, she was respinning commercially spun singles, driving more twist in to make a sturdy warp. Knowing I was a spinner, she explained the techniques and showed me the right amount of twist, then let me try...

I had nowhere near the speed and skill that Barbara has, but I have a far better understanding of the Navajo spindle now and have ordered one to practice on from Lynda's husband, Belvin, who also built the looms we used.

I finished my rug, along with a few others in the class, and Barbara said a traditional Navajo blessing over the rugs. We cut the selvedges, and I brought my ends home to plant in my garden so my rug will always know where it's home is.

I took the warping class, too. Which didn't go quite so smoothly. I made a really dumb mistake, crossing my warps at some place, which led to Barbara having to unwarp and rethread a good third of the warp by hand...

My job was to keep tension on the warp yarn as she worked it back into the selvedges, which meant I spent a lot of time with this view...

I was terribly upset by the inconvenience that I was putting the teachers to, but I learned a great lesson about patience--using it when I work, having it with myself, and the gift of the patience of others for the mistakes learners make. And in the end, I had a warp for my next rug...

..which I began weaving the next day when I moved to Ventura and Part Two of the California Odyssey.

Stuck

I'm stuck. Jammed. In a rut. Unmoving. Between a rock and a hard place. Nowhere to go.

Yup, I have come up against our old friend, Creative Block.

I had great plans back in January. I had ideas for a dozen projects, all of them brilliant. I accumulated the necessary materials. I started spinning. I cast on. I threaded a loom. I made notes for articles. I was on a roll.

Then, I just stopped rolling. Nothing terrible happened. I'm fine. The family's fine. Life is good. I just don't want to make anything right now. I pick up my knitting and put it back down five minutes later. I sit down to write a blog post and stare at the blank screen for half an hour. I spin for fifteen minutes and I have to get up and rearrange the bookshelf because it's bugging me.

I still love the projects that I have started. I am, slowly, chipping away at them. But for right now, I need to be doing something else. I just don't know what.

I'll let you know when I get back on track.

Lessons from the Flu

So the media tells me that this year's flu season is off to an early and dramatic start. Sadly, this does not come as a news flash to me. You see, I am part of that early and dramatic start. (Insert sad-face emoticon of your choice here.)

Instead of plying yarn and spinning new yarn, instead of finishing up those two nagging UFO's left over from before Christmas, and instead of workshop prep, I have been laying on the couch. Moaning. Channel surfing and cruising the internet. Which was probably not wise. On the other hand, it was educational. Here is what I learned:

~Television is a mindless wasteland of Botoxed bimbos and plaid-shirted men with beards, all of whom speak in a language of bleeps and boops. They also yell a lot.

~Do not try to learn what is going on in the world from television news channels. All those are is outlets for "pundits" with "opinions", all of which seem to be about what is wrong with everyone else.

~Netflix is your friend.

~To go on Netflix you have to go on the internet.

~The internet is a series of tubes filled with cats. And people who have no basic spelling or grammar skills.

~If you are looking for angry, bigoted, uninformed, and paranoid people, go immediately to the internet. It's a virtual smorgasbord of rage.

~There is also yarn on the internet. Lots and lots of yarn.

~Sometimes it is a good thing to be too sick to get up off the couch and go across the room to where your purse containing your credit card is.

~There is also a lot of bad yarn on the internet. A. Lot. Some of it sold by those people with the bad spelling, or by the angry and paranoid. Really. You should see some of the crazy stuff people put on their Etsy pages. This is also a good reason to not get up to get your purse. Dudes, if you want to sell stuff, keep your politics and religion to yourselves.

~Do not look up your symptoms on the internet. I may or may not have actually been suffering from Anthrax.

~A cup of hot water with honey, lemon, and Jack Daniels will make you not care about television or the internet.

~You are better off not caring about television or the internet.

~Put on some soft music, knit something mindless, cuddle a kitty, and sleep. You will feel so much better.

~Most importantly, respect your body. Rest. Heal. The world will wait, and you're not missing anything.

~These lessons may also turn out to be useful when you are not sick.

And, on that note, I'm going to take a nap.

St. Distaff's Day

...or Another Excuse to Spend A Day Spinning.

Back when spinning was a "real job", St. Distaff day was the traditional day that spinners went back to work, the day after Twelfth Night. Naturally, they were thrilled to be back at their spinning wheel, and made excuses to celebrate.  There is no St. Distaff, but in those days, every holiday was in honour of one saint or another, so the spinners (clever girls that they were) made a new saint to celebrate. And we celebrate to this day.

(For you non-spinny types, a distaff is a spinning tool. It is a rod or board used to hold unspun fibre, especially flax, and keep it organized and tidy for the spinner to draft from. The actual patron saint of spinners is St. Serafina, who also happens to be the patron saint of the suffering and deformed. St. Catherine is also a patron saint to those who craft with wheels, such as spinners and potters. They have their own feast days, but not today!)

My celebration will consist of a day of plying. To be honest, I have not taken the Twelve Days of Christmas off from spinning. I have, in fact, done pretty much the opposite. I have done little else. Oh, a little cooking here and there, and ridiculous amounts of bread have been baked, but mostly, spinning.  I am running out of empty bobbins, though, so plying is becoming a must.  I have this...

 ...about 300g of Wensleydale top, handpainted by Spunky Eclectic in the November Spunky Club colour way "Not So Seaworthy" (inspired by a photo of a shipwreck, presumably a flaming shipwreck). Three singles with random colour placement for a 3-ply sock yarn.

And this...

...the rest of the NZ Crossbred roving, also from Spunky Eclectic, that I had spun before Christmas. Once this is plied, I should have enough for a vest.

St. Distaff will be well celebrated around here!

And what is a celebration without a feast?  January 7 also happens to be Ukrainian Christmas, which, being of Ukrainian descent, I observe with a massive feed of the family's favourite Ukrainian foods. There are holopchi (cabbage rolls)...

...and a massive number of hand-made peroghies...

Along with a big pot of borscht, some poppy seed roll, and a roast, this will be an epic feast.

I will admit that we are a day late this year with this feast. Tradition dictates that the Christmas meal is eaten on Christmas Eve on the Gregorian calendar, but family scheduling made tonight a better night to do this. And it works out just right for me. I have to hang around the house as all of the food that I prepared over the weekend slowly cooks to perfection in the oven. I have plying to do. And it's St. Distaff day, a day to celebrate spinning.

So whatever this day brings, remember to take a moment to make a little string in honour of a non-existent saint and celebrate the magic of what it is that we do when we take a fistful of fluff and turn it into something wonderful to knit or weave with. And if you don't know how to spin, hug someone who does--and maybe they'll offer you a lesson or two! And if you don't have a spinner around to hug, celebrate anyway.

Because life is good.

The Truth About "True Woolen"

I've been laying low and spinning for the past few weeks, with sporadic bursts of baking and holiday gatherings thrown in to keep things interesting. I've been pondering the projects I am taking on, preparing for my 2013 workshops, and writing. And all of this means I have been thinking way to much about the minutiae of our craft.

So I was deep in this place of over-thinking when the dreaded phrase that never fails to raise my blood pressure came up again. This phrase is one commonly used in technical spinning circles, but it's definition varies from expert to expert. It is a phrase that strikes terror in the hearts of spinners everywhere. And it is a lie. This phrase is "TRUE WOOLEN".

Spot the "true" woollen. C'mon, I dare ya!

 As spinners, we all want to do it "right". We want to make our yarns in the best traditional manner we can. But few of us actually understand the physics and mechanics of making the yarn, even the most experienced of us. We rely on the experts and gurus who have taught us for the correct language, the proper terminology, and the correct definition of the terms. As a teacher, I have seen dozens of people who have spun, successfully, for years suddenly throw everything they know out the window because a famous teacher told them that they were doing it "wrong".

Now, I am not a fan of the "there is no right or wrong" school of spinning, either. I do believe that some techniques are more effective than others, and that learning these techniques and refining them will make you a better spinner.  And, sometimes, you have to learn the less-effective techniques, too. Learning the "wrong" thing will often help you understand the "right" thing. There are several very effective ways to make yarn, each with its own virtues and shortcomings, each with a very specific outcome. It is learning which techniques works best for the result you want that sets you free to be a great spinner.

As I see it, the problem does not lie in the "right" and "wrong" techniques. It lies in the language we use to describe these techniques. And some of the most misleading and inaccurate language exists in the phrase "true woolen".

Here's what's wrong with that phrase: "true woolen" is far too often used to describe a drafting technique rather than the yarn. Woolen and worsted are words that describe YARNS, not techniques. I cringe every time I hear someone say, "I'm working on perfecting my worsted drafting." or some such other twaddle. (Though I will admit that I frequently joke that "that's some of the worsted drafting I've ever seen!") I reiterate: worsted is NOT a drafting technique. Nor is woollen. They are the resultant yarns.

Briefly, to clarify: A woolen yarn is one in which the fibres, after spinning, plying, and finishing, lie in a non-parallel arrangement. The fibres, when examined, will be jumbled in all directions, pushing outward and making a fuzzy, lofty yarn. A worsted yarn, on the other hand, is one in which the fibres, after spinning, plying, and finishing, lie parallel to each other. These fibres will be arranged in a smooth, linear manner, pulled close together and pushing up and down along the length of a smooth, compact yarn.

For the uninitiated, worsted is on the left, woolen is on the right.

What determines whether a yarn is woolen or worsted is NOT how long your drafting zone is, or how fast or slow you draft, or whether you double draft or not. It is how the twist enters the fibre and how it stays there. There are several steps to creating a woolen or a worsted yarn, which I will not go into in detail here today. Let it suffice to say that selection and preparation of fibres, spinning techniques (including spinning wheel set-up!), plying, and finishing techniques are all factors in making these different styles of yarns successfully. And the more of these steps that are appropriate to the style of the yarn, the closer to "true" woolen or worsted we get.

Woolen yarns are best spun from non-parallel arrangements of fibre, such as roving or rolags. However, there are ways of spinning parallel arrangements, such as sliver or top, to achieve a woolen result. It's just easier to start the way you intend to continue. Non-parallel arrangements will obviously be easier to turn into non-parallel yarns, and vice-versa for parallel arrangements. Drafting techniques that allow the fibres to stay non-parallel (i.e. by not pulling them out straight before allowing the twist in) will obviously keep those fibres in that configuration.

And it is at this point that I get a little testy. There is pretty much one way to draft a worsted yarn: by pulling the fibres straight and guiding twist in with your lead hand. There are several ways to draft a woolen yarn, all variations on a theme. We attenuate (pull the fibres into a thin line) and allow the twist to go where it will. We do not guide the twist in, we do not control or compact our fibres with our lead hand. We pull those fibres thin over a space of a few inches, or we can pull them out to the full extension of our arm. We can pinch fibres to control the rate at which the twist grabs them, or we can let the twist travel unimpeded. (We call the first "supported long draw" and the latter "unsupported long draw".) We can use a Scotch-tension wheel, or a bobbin-led, or a double-drive. Or a spindle. No matter how fast or slow we draft, no matter how long we pull back, these techniques all achieve the same result: a non-parallel yarn.

Adherents of the "true woolen" draft insist that we must draft quickly and with little control, relying on "double-drafting" (another bugaboo--don't get me started!) to smooth out our yarns. They sneer at slow, controlled drafting, or at "supported" drafting as being less than traditional and resulting in inferior yarns. They tell us that other methods make our yarns "too tight for woollen", or worse, the dreaded "semi-woolen".  They tell us that woolen yarns must be, by definition, uneven in the singles, lumpy and slubby. They tell us that we cannot make a lace-weight or thin woolen, that woolen must be thick to be lofty. They are wrong, or at least inaccurate, on all counts. The simple fact of the matter is, if you do not guide the twist into fully parallel fibres over a short, controlled space, you are making a woolen yarn. Tight, loose, even, uneven, thick, thin, semi-, hemi-, or demi-, WOOLEN.

 I think it is time to put a stop to this nonsense. We have got to stop labelling one drafting method as a "true woolen" technique, and we have to start looking at what the language of our craft means. Let's stop using the word "woolen" to talk about drafting and start using the proper words like long-draw and short-draw. Let's stop quibbling over "supported" and "unsupported". Let's make the yarn that we want to make, in the best way that works for us and stop putting false labels on the way we do it.

Lets make yarn that is true for us.

WE vs THEY

                     I have met the enemy, and he is us. ~ Walt Kelly

On Friday, December 14, the unthinkable happened. A young man walked into an elementary school in Newton, Connecticut and shot and killed 20 young children and 6 staff members before taking his own life. As the drama unfolded, we also learned that before this climactic act of violence, he had murdered his own mother in their home. This was a terrible tragedy, a terrible day for the whole of Newton, the whole of America, and the whole of the world.

But what has struck me as even more terrible has been the response to this shooting.

As human beings, our response to that which hurts us is to lash out. To, in effect, hurt back. We react to bad news first with denial, then with anger. It seems to be how we are programmed. And we need somewhere to direct that anger. We place blame. We find a villain.

Some are blaming the guns. Guns ARE a problem. Guns serve one purpose. They are tools of death, and too many people take the use of them far too casually. But guns are not THE problem.

(Sidebar here: Could someone please explain to me, in a calm, rational manner how the ownership of semi-automatic weapons designed to kill large numbers of enemy combatants efficiently equals personal freedom? Really?)

Some are blaming the lack of services for the mentally ill. It is true that there is a dearth of care for those with mental and emotional issues. We understand so little about mental illness and about our own minds that it is easy to look away from it, and to cut funding from budgets, because there is no cut and dried solution. Again, a real problem, but not the only problem.

Some have tried to blame the mother. After all, SHE bought the guns. SHE was a "gun nut". SHE was divorced from her husband and raising a troubled son alone. What those people seem to be forgetting is that SHE was a human being, doing her best, who was also a victim of this violent rampage. NO ONE, no matter their faults, deserves that.

Still others are blaming the media. The media "glamourizes" these terrible events. No, they don't. It is the media's job to answer the five W's: what, when, where, who, and why. We want to know what is going on around us, and the media is our connection to that information. The media's biggest failing is that, when it cannot give an answer, it makes something up to keep you interested until the truth comes out. THAT is the problem with the media. They can't just say, "We don't know, but we'll tell you later when we have some facts." because people will turn away and their sponsors will not have anyone to slog Cialis and laundry detergent to. Again, a problem, but not THE problem.

And some are blaming the lack of enforced prayer in schools, because God does not go where he is not invited. I'm not even going to go there.

The terrible tragedy in Newtown is, sadly, just another terrible tragedy in a long line of terrible tragedies. This year has seemed particularly bad for mass shootings, suicides amongst bullied teens, atrocities committed by governments against their people. (Or maybe it's all just the media's fault for reporting it.) This year has seen a lot of talk about stopping shcoolyard bullying, as bullying at the government and corporate level has reached an all-time high. This year has seen the horrible divisiveness of the US election, the violence of the election in Quebec, and the awfulness of the red-neck rhetoric in the election in Alberta. This year has been a year of WE versus THEY. We must fight the other side, be it bullying, the opposing political philosophy, the different religious belief.

It strikes me, as I look at the events of last Friday in sequence with all the other events of 2012, that the problem with the world is not guns, or mothers, or media sensationalism. It is us. We NEED to find a bad guy, a scapegoat, an OTHER.

We have a WE versus THEY mentality. Good versus Evil. Right versus Wrong. And in order for us to be the ones who are right, the OTHER has to be wrong. Right-wing versus left-wing, rich versus poor, black versus white, pro versus con. There are two sides to every argument, and no middle ground. And it has to be a full-out, cage match battle to the death. No surrender.

So, what if we changed the terms of engagement? We want to have WE versus THEY. It seems to be our human instinct. Okay...how about we redefine who WE and THEY are?

Several great philosophies have proposed this: There are only two human emotions, love and fear. When we act, we are acting from either one or the other. Acting from love results in charity, acceptance, and kindness. Acting from fear results in anger, cruelty, and violence. Acting from love is hard, because it requires us to look inside ourselves and see not only our strength, but our weakness and helplessness, and to accept them. We can then see the weakness and vulnerability in others, and accept it. Acting from fear is easy, because we look outward at what we fear and we can blame it and make it the enemy. We do not have to accept it, we can battle it, strive to hurt it. And if we cause fear to someone else in the process, all the better, because then we are not alone in our fear. The more fearful we are, the harder we fight and the louder we yell.

When we lash out at blame the shooter, the NRA, the media, we are responding from fear. We were helpless to save those poor children, we feel impotent, we are fearful. So was that young gunman.  He reacted to that fear the only way he knew how. He was helpless and impotent and fearful, he strove to fight that fear with violence in an attempt to feel less fearful and more powerful. He shared his fear, and spread it, not only amongst the students of Sandy Hook, but throughout the world. He multiplied his fear, giving him power and sapping ours.

WE can respond from love, while THEY continue to respond from fear.

When we respond with love, if we feel compassion not only for the victims of the shooter, but for the shooter himself; if we understand that the more aggressive one's actions are, the more fearful they are; if we forgive our perceived enemies, WE become the strong ones. We accept that we are not perfect, therefore our view of right and wrong are not definitive. We accept that another may see things differently, but that does not change the rightness of how we see it. We understand that everyone has the same weaknesses that we have, and that their perceived power is actually the manifestation of their fear. We no longer feel threatened by them, and we become stronger.

Here is what I propose: The next time something happens that makes you feel helpless and powerless, accept that you are powerless. Cry. Curl up in a fetal position on the floor. Let that helplessness wash over you. And then get up and dry your eyes and do something kind for yourself.  Make a cup of tea, take a hot bath, go for a pedicure. Then go do something kind for one other person. Hug your child, let someone in ahead of you in traffic, pay for the next person's coffee. And move forward. Do not cling to that thing that made you helpless. Look forward to tomorrow. Tomorrow will bring its own challenges, but you will be just a little bit stronger, because you did not let fear win today.

When WE approach the world with love, we are not battling an external enemy, we are battling the fear inside ourselves. WE do not need to do harm to others to win. WE need only to accept that they are as weak and as powerless as we are. And then we see that THEY are as human as we are, and that they are not the OTHER, they are just as much WE as we are.

None of this is going to undo the terrible things that have happened. We cannot bring back those 28 people who died on Friday, or the 250-some-odd who have died of gunshot wounds since then. We cannot undo the harsh words that were Tweeted. But we can move forward and choose to apply our WE versus THEY instinct in a more constructive manner. We can choose to battle from a Love versus Fear standpoint instead.

And maybe, just maybe, if enough of us fight from love instead of fear, we won't need guns, or mental health services, or angry words, or blame. Maybe, just maybe, we will cease to be WE versus THEY and just become US.

50 Shades

Ten days from today is the first day of winter (or the end of the world, whichever comes first), but I am already suffering from the winter blahs.

I'm really not a cold-weather person, in spite of the fact that I have lived in a cold-weather climate all my life. I tend to bundle up and hibernate for the wintery months. I am not a snow enthusiast, and the long, dark nights make me lazier than usual. But the thing about winter that drags me down the most is the grey.

When I look out at my garden, which is my favourite place on the planet in the summertime, all I see is grey. Even the spruce trees outside the gate take on a greyish tone in the cold, grey light...

The view out my studio window offers even more grey...

My usual cure for all the grey is to spin and knit bright yarns. But this year, as the darkest day of the year approaches, I find myself immersed in grey, even in my work.

Yup. Every single thing I am knitting right now is...you guessed it...grey...

A shawl, a sweater, and a mystery Christmas project. All grey.

And over on the spinning front, things are not much better. I'm working on samples for a few projects, but mostly, I'm combing a lovely Gotland fleece. A lovely GREY Gotland fleece...

So, to break the monotony of the unrelenting grey, I spent Sunday spinning a fabulous hand-painted roving from Spunky Eclectic. The colourway is called Undertow, all blues and greens, my favourite colours. Dyed over a grey NZ Crossbred fibre. And as I spun, guess which colour dominated. Yup. I now have this glorious blue-green-GREY 2-ply woolen yarn...

I surrender. I am just going to have to ride out these grey days.

But I would like to point out that the title of a very popular book has it wrong. There are waaay more than 50 shades of grey. And I appear to be knitting them all.