Perspective

Posted on January 1, 2014 by Susacadia

I used to sit in Friends Meeting meditating on perspective. My inspiration came from observing the brick wall outside an upper window. Intellectually I was aware that the lines of mortar were parallel, as were the muntins (my first new word for the year) in the window; I even knew that if I went outside and measured they would be parallel to each other. From where I sat, however, they were anything but. Nor did there appear to be right angles. I understand convergence of lines in perspective drawing, and that when you are looking up at something that is pretty far off your right shoulder there is more distortion added. Still and all, I couldn’t shift what I knew and make it what I saw. This was not an Escher style exercise or one of those things where you can adjust your eyes to make boxes cave in, or explode from the paper. The eyes sees what they will.

This year I have been mulling over other things that require an understanding of where I am, mentally and physically, as I look at them. Here is one example, again with a Quaker context. We were having a discussion a number of years ago about what your options are when you are at the end of your rope. We were, by and large, taking it as an exercise in how to deal with frustration, and options curtailed. Then one Friend said, “Doesn’t it depend on which end of your rope you have hold of?” Huh? Instantly the conversation made a 120 degree turn, as if once one alternate perspective was finally spoken others could now be aired. What if it was at the beginning of the rope? What if you were climbing rather than slipping down? What if was a rope on which you were sliding down, but were dropping gently into the water from a burning ship? The shift opened doors, windows, and sink holes into amazing caverns littered with gems.

This line of thought started as I was working on yet another Mobius scarf, this one with 5 half twists (hopefully) yielding a pentagon-like structure. I started thinking about how this looks like a solid thing, 3D, with volume. And yet when you examine a Mobius structure it is one sided. Here is a knitted example: web-2inmoebius-cover

The way it is shaped results in a scarf that doesn’t bunch up and lies flat under the collar of a coat. It can also twist around your ears without slipping off. The nature of the Mobius is that ———- It has only one side! If you make a paper one (take a strip of paper, flip one end over. Maintain that orientation and tape the two ends together) and then start drawing a line around the center of the strip, you will meet that same line after having, apparently, gone around twice without ever having to lift your pen. So, I’ve been knitting a Mobius scarf, getting in the groove for a knit-along hosted by BadCatDesigns, and I’ve been thinking that beyond changing perspective, there are things that just so blatantly seem to be one thing and have some sweet inner secret, like Mobius strips.

I’ve seen  my kids that way. After being put off a couple of times while I finished up something I was working on, one of them, about age 3, went to the fridge, got out the milk and chocolate syrup, and began to prepare of glass of chocolaty goodness. Then something happened and when we came down to the dining room there were drizzles of dark chocolate syrup all over the maple wood floors, the darker cherry wood table, and out onto the pine porch. One of us got angry at the mess and waste. The other saw the way the chocolate color complimented the browns of the different woods and could see how the young chef might have gotten carried away. Perspective.

Charley Dartnell, former minister at Husson College, once preached a sermon on remembering past wounds and wrongs. It fits into my theme. He said that these were like rowing a boat. You guided yourself by seeing the things behind you, essentially moving backwards toward your destination. You used these things as landmarks to help you steer away from danger. Your perspective helped you row straight, helped you orient yourself. Again, perspective.

These things weigh into my meditation for today: things are not what they seem; change perspective and you change what you see; there is more depth to some things than can be scientifically proven.

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What I carry

Posted on December 19, 2013 by Susacadia

I attended a writing workshop at the Jesup Memorial Library a few weeks ago. The prompt we were given – borrowed, I’m going to suspect, from Tim O’Brien – was “What do you carry?” Reactions of other writers were similar to those that I used to get with my favorite beginning prompt: Dig in your pocket, purse, backpack. Pull out the first thing you touch. Write about it. Follow up with doing the same thing with your junk drawer or closet.  Here, with a bit of editing, is what I wrote:

These days I carry my knitting. I didn’t become militant about this until I re-entered the teaching profession. I am now, however, an equal opportunity public  knitter, and make sure I have my bag with yarn and needles whenever I suspect I might need the therapy. It helps me feel productive when I need to wait; I seem to do a lot of that, even when I’m supposed to be otherwise engaged. I knit waiting my turn in offices, on car rides, before shows. I particularly knit during meetings.

I once joked that when a meeting starts to bog down into inane blather, I would start undoing my work, (tinking for the slow process of backing out stitch by stitch, “tink” being “knit” spelled backwards, frogging for the fast process of removing needles and pulling the working thread—after the sound the frog makes: rip-it, rip-it) until the meeting starts moving forward again. The measure of meeting productivity could then be judged by whether I had actually made any net progress on my scarf or shawl or sock or sweater.

I used to always carry a book for these moments of down time. Certainly in my days of travelling by bus or train a book was an essential part of my baggage. When I entered that age when I was expected to attend and participate in meetings it became evident that other attenders didn’t feel I was keeping up my end of the participation bargain if I delved into a novel when other were trying (at least by their lights) to get business done. The other side of this truth is that they kept interrupting my reading with questions or comments. In some longer, all day meetings, they would ask the participants to get up, “vote with your feet,” as a strategy for keeping attenders away. I used to doodle, as well, making elaborate designs – now known as ZenDoodling – as the meetings droned on. The big disadvantage of either books or doodling is that the mind can become totally involved with non-meeting stuff, and direct questions can come as a shock.

So I started carrying knitting instead of a book and left my notebook for meeting notes. I had an interesting model for this. Back in the day, when I was trying to readjust myself to living in the States, I went on a series of fairly eclectic interviews. One was at a law office where they were looking for a clerk typist, which I figured I could do. One of the interviewers, the office manager was knitting. It is a telling fact that I can remember the pale blue lace shawl being knit on, I would guess #9 straight needles, more clearly after all these years than anything about the actual interview. This woman pulled up her rocking chair and knit through the interview, only occasionally glancing at her work. I knit like that, too.

There was something about the physical activity of moving needles and yarn, different enough from the wordiness of talk, that I could pay attention better if I was knitting. Suzette Hayden Elgin featured knitting and other handwork for this purpose in her Native Tongue series. I studied while knitting, my books or articles spread on the table in front of me, and me knitting a sweater in the round. The work was broken up by color changes and I found that I could look at the sweater and remember what I had been reading for each color shift.

There is another aspect of knitting during meetings. It slows my thought process down – like putting a retarder on an overly rambunctious engine. I can pay attention better and, perhaps more importantly, without feeling compelled to add my own two cents for every point made. I was in one workshop where the presenter was determined to catch me out. She walked around the room, between chairs and tables, her eyes fixed on me and my busy hands. I finally became aware of what she was doing when she came up behind me and checked out my notebook. At times like this I occasionally pause to take notes, either electronically or on paper, and I pick a knitting project that does not require me to follow directions. I am pleased to say I was on task as far as that went. I smiled, nearly honestly, and kept my eyes glued to her as she meandered, never missing a stitch. I’ve got to think, all in all, that she was more distracted than I was.

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Re-entry, or “How I came home to a place I’d never been.”

Posted on December 14, 2013 by Susacadia

Ursula Le Guin wrote in The Dispossessed, “You can go home again, the General Temporal Theory asserts, so long as you understand that home is a place where you have never been.” I first read that book when I had been living in Morocco for nearly five years. It would take me another two before I was ready to take the plunge of going home. I made use of lessons I learned decades earlier, when my family returned to the States after having lived in Kenya and Jordan.

The first time I returned to the United States I was 12 years old. I did not think of myself as a child, but I definitely knew I wasn’t in control of anything. I felt I should have been, but wasn’t. One day I was sent to the Grand Union with a pocket full of coins snatched from the change jar. My mission: to acquire a half gallon of milk. It certainly sounds simple enough and I can almost hear you saying, “Yeah. So? What’s the problem? Is there a story to this? Where’s the conflict?” Well, up to that point what little walking around money I possessed had not been in US currency. I had bought falafel and green almonds from street vendors. But I had never been to the movies by myself. Never been to a book store without someone holding the purse. Never really lived anywhere that I could be sent to the store to get a half gallon or quarter pound of anything. I’d watched my parents negotiate shopping at the IGA (for meat, cheese, and paper goods) and the Grand Union (canned goods and vegetables), but apparently I had not vicariously picked up as much strategy as the job required.

So there I was with a half gallon of milk from the cooler at the back of the store, and my pocket full of change. Someone with a cart full of groceries very kindly let me go ahead of them. I had planned to take that line-waiting time to figure out the change situation, but now I was face to face with the checkout woman and in the throws of Math Anxiety. The milk probably cost something like 63?. Looking back, there were all sorts of problems with my initial plan, not the least of which was the tactical problem of juggling a handful of coins while holding a carton of milk. It would have been no easier if it had been the bottle I was expecting. (The fact that the milk was in a carton added to my confusion since I had only ever seen milk in bottles before, either the traditional milk bottles with the little snap in paper insert, or re-purposed wine bottles with a twist of newspaper in the neck to keep the most of the milk inside and the flies out.)

So there I was, with a fist full of unfamiliar coinage, and a woman tapping her cash register keys, and another woman, with a full cart and melting ice cream, probably wishing she wasn’t being so poorly repaid for her kindness. “Sixty-three cents,” said the cashier, a little bit louder the third time just in case my problem was in my ears and not between them. I smacked the coins down on the counter. “Take what you need.” I’m sure she snapped her gum as she picked out the coins she needed. Then I had the joy of retrieving the extra change, the metal rim around the counter preventing me from just sliding it all into the palm of my hand.

So there I was, with a half gallon of milk, a lighter pocketful of change, feeling stupid as I trudged up the sidewalk, back to our house. What was so hard about this was not the newness. I understood about how to adjust to a brand new country with new customs. What was so hard was that I had expected it to be familiar. Other people expected that I would know what to do in common, everyday situations. I had expected this to be home. And I found out that, although it might be the country and culture of my birth, it was still just as foreign as the alleys of Jerusalem had been the first time I saw them. I had not yet read The Dispossessed, but when I did, it was illuminating.

The last time I returned to the United States to live, more than half my life had been spent since attempting to buy milk at the Grand Union. I was on the cusp of another transition having turned 30 and given up the expatriate life. Even with Le Guin’s words in mind I found the disparity between expectations and reality… I guess “jarring” is the correct word.

There were habits I didn’t know I had, and ways of interacting with people that surprised everyone involved. Handshaking in the States is almost exclusively the purview of meeting or leaving significant people. It does not happen between casual friends. We shake hands with our car dealer as the relationship is embarked. Subsequently we shake hands when the deal is made. In between questions burst out of the air without preamble. We don’t shake hands with our doctor, certainly not after the initial visit. We don’t shake hands with everyone at a meeting; we just enter the room and sit down. We don’t shake hands with our car pool riders; we just get in the car and start talking. After seven years of one sort of prescribed interactions, I found it hard to adjust to a new one. And that in spite of the fact that I had coached new teachers fresh off the plane from the States, in how they needed to interact with their Moroccan colleagues. Intellectually I was aware and viscerally it didn’t matter. At work I compromised. Instead of shaking hands I made the rounds, chatting briefly with everyone in the office.

Shopping was a somewhat different issue, although handshaking entered into that as well. Apparently you don’t do idle chit chat following a handshake just before asking “Where do you keep your lime juice?” Rather, you just go up to the young man and pop the question baldly. The real problem was how to choose between 3 different types of lime juice, or 8 different types of toilet paper. Never mind that each different brand of toilet paper has packaging options, whether the rolls are grouped by the dozen, or eight, or four, or singly. I longed for the choice between the red crepe paper style of toilet paper or the off-green tissue paper style – both needed to be roughed up before use, and frankly newspaper thus treated was softer.

There were some things that were made easier by the American way of doing things. I didn’t have to go to extraordinary lengths to figure out how much meat to ask for at the butcher. It was pre-packaged into amounts in the cooler case. I could just look and imagine how many portions by volume. Prices were marked and, except for cars, that was the price. I am still fascinated by the number and variety of writing implements available and can be found wandering back and forth in that section of Staples or Walmart just looking at the pens and comparing styles of nibs, colors and qualities of ink, click or cap. Other stuff I’ve become brand loyal – not out of any true sense of affiliation or joy in use, but because it cuts down on the confusion of choice . There is the soap that I buy. The same is true of paper towel, soup, pasta, floor cleaner.

I understood there were a couple of things at work to create this dissonance. One, of course, was the difference in customs. The other, and the one that played nicely into my strategy of pretending the US was a brand new country and cultural situation for me, was that I had never really been an adult in the US. I had left for the Peace Corps a year after I got out of college. Although I had certainly been shopping and been involved in meetings, by stance was that of a kid (as I thought of myself) and not that of an adult. So all my public interactions as adult-to-adult had been learned out of my “native” culture. I won’t (right now) get into all the other things in this world that are made more gnarly by the external expectations not resonating with the internal reality. I’m sure you can imagine them.

I have entered the US multiple times between and since these events, but always as part of a temporary return or absence. Vacations, in one direction or the other, are different. For those I have always had the sense of a suspended stasis that I first noticed when I was in college. Then, wherever I was, it seemed as if I had never been anywhere else. There are a lot of places where I think I should feel at home but don’t. That is as much because I don’t feel at home in my own skin as any external influence. Do I feel at home here in the US? Not really. But I do at Bee Berry Woods. That is a tale, as they say, for another day.

This is the first of a series of (intermittent) posts on transitions.

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The Language of Knitting

Posted on December 7, 2013 by Susacadia

As with many communities geared toward the discussion of a broad topic, there are threads in the knitting world that rise from time to time. Sometimes this is a seasonal manifestation – Christmas or Hanukkah gifts; wool, cotton, or linen for summer knitting – but more often it is a factor of new jointers in the community, people who were not there the first few times the topic was broached. Or maybe the word should be “breached.” Either one is fitting in its own metaphoric sense. One such question has to do with how instructions are presented, whether in charts or in words written line-by-line. The question has reared its head on another list.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I should say that I am primarily a chart girl. This is an exploration of my rationale.

The debate of whether to present a pattern in chart or line-by-line form has many camps and takes on the emotional fervor of the burger wars, or the Mac vs. PC controversy. Some are content to leave it as a declaration of their preference, while others feel compelled to explain why their preference is the necessary strategy for them. Still others offer roadmaps for conversion, casting non-charters as just being stubborn, or believe that given enough information they will cheerfully leave their old ways behind. And there are those who demand one version or the other as their entitled right, holding up reduction of market share as the lure, or perhaps goad, to getting their own way. I see it as primarily a linguistic issue.

First, let’s be clear. To follow any knitting pattern requires learning a language that is not, strictly speaking English, or German, or Spanish, or Japanese, or whatever. (I’ll be using “English” as my reference point from here on out, but I’ve seen enough patterns to know my remarks will hold true for other languages as well.) A typical line-by-line instruction might be “k3, YO, k2tog, p4, ssk, YO, k3” or “k, ssk, k to 3 stitches remaining, k2tog, k every 4th row;” these are hardly straightforward English. In chart form the first might look more like this: ChartDemo while the second would probably not be charted at all. With either of these presentations there would be a key that would translate from either the abbreviations (k, k2tog, etc.) or the pictorial representation. It is also necessary for the knitter to be able to transfer the printed instructions, in whichever format, to actions that involve, as Kerry Ferguson (among, I’m sure, countless others) put it “two sticks and a string.” The first example might be found in a lace scarf patter, the second in the sleeve portion of a sweater pattern.

Second, the snarky part of me says if you can learn one set of cryptic terms, you can learn another. The teacher part of me understands that dyslexia exists and accommodations can (and should) be made. For me, they are all symbols, whether phonetic or pictorial. There are, however, some people who profess to be unable to read the pictures due to some sort of brain malfunction. How is it they can read and type and not understand that a box with a left leaning slash mark is the same as “ssk”? The only answer I can arrive at is that the malfunction, a stroke perhaps, or a whack on the head, occurred after they had already learned one method of reading patterns. That was well stored in long term memory and not subject to erasure through trauma. Some of these people are able to play tricks like color coding the symbols, and knitting from the colors rather than the symbols themselves. Some push the symbols through a variety of translation programs to get words. Some pattern software packages generate both charts and line-by-line patterns. But really, how different is this from learning to read music, understanding the Shaker shape note system rather than the standard note system, or learning the vocabulary associated with carpentry, auto-mechanics, brain surgery, or computer programming. Much of it, barring the brain damage, is about how much of a new language you want to learn, how much trouble it will be, and weighing your return on investment.

I learned how to knit from grandmothers, and followed patterns that were all written out. It was not until I was in my late twenties that I discovered there were charts. I was living overseas and discovered an Anna Magazine, in German, with a charted lace doily by Herbert Neibling. I had time on my hands, and the illustrations for each stitch were so clear that I fell in love. I recognized that I had broader access to other people’s designs if I could use charts than if I had to rely on figuring out knitting terms and abbreviations in other languages. I see the charting system as an alternate alphabet with a broad, but finite, set of characters. When I encounter a design element I want to include in something and it is written out in English, I will chart it before knitting. It is a way of proofing the pattern. It also lets me make adjustments to eyelets, slope of stitches, or arrangement of picots (etc. of course!). Charting also helps me see how stitches will line up vertically and lets me “read” my knitting more accurately. I now prefer charts for lace, cables, travelling stitches, and any other texture or color work. So, while I don’t turn up my nose at line-by-line patterns, I do think twice if charting will be worth it.

Third, and last, is the issue of whether people are entitled to have both charts and line-by-line patterns presented in the same package. I have witnessed a fair amount of nastiness toward designers who only present one mode of pattern. As a designer myself, I think in pictures which are most like charts. The charts let me see more nearly what the finished pattern will look like. I can also balance my increases and decreases more easily in a chart than in writing out a pattern in line-by-line format. While I am certainly capable of writing out each line of a pattern once charted, it is definitely tedious in the extreme. There are other things I’d rather be doing with my time. It is as if someone said to, say, JK Rowling, “You’ve had a good classical education and know quite a bit of French. Now that you’ve finished Harry Potter, The Sorceror’s Apprentice, how about translating it? And why don’t you have a go at putting it into Chinese, or German as well? This is a task that any publisher would hire out rather than impose on an author. And while many designers can use software to make a line-by-line translation of a chart, the resulting language is about as smooth as using Babelfish. Sometimes it works, sometimes you’ve got to do some serious interpretation to understand what is meant. As a reader, I accept that there are novels, short stories, and newspapers that I will never be able to read because they are in a language I neither possess nor am willing (or perhaps able, but really “willing” is the correct word for me) to put in the effort to learn. I would never dream of badgering an author who writes in Japanese to also provide a side-by-side translation into English. I suspect they will be OK with the loss of my custom. I believe designers are aware of who their audience is, and are OK with where they’ve placed the edges of their inclusion.

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String too short; saved anyway

Posted on November 28, 2013 by Susacadia
Our personal year begins the week before Thanksgiving. This one is going to be a year of shedding. Kitchen drawers are cleaned out. Including the “junk drawer” (8 bazillion thrice used twist ties, press and seal saran wrap, bread bag clips, plastic safety scissors, batteries—some leaky, some not) and the drawer that was home to the instruction manuals of lost appliances. Not only is this stuff we haven’t used in years, even while we were living here, but it is stuff that there was little reason to save in the first place.
Before you chime in, yes, the twist ties have come in use in a Thrifty New Englander kind of way, sealing up bags of frozen vegetables, closing bread bags repurposed as cheese containers, and being peeled of their plastic to become a reset actuator for the tiny reset hole in my MP3 player. Rewound they became handy hangers for decorations, or stitch and row markers. It wasn’t that they were not still useful, but just that re-using them once would probably have been enough. And that keeping them for their third or fourth round of usefulness, while still adding to the collection with fresh acquisitions seems, this morning anyway, to border on hording. The same goes for the zip-ties from the days when a roll of trash bags game with both zip and twist ties that you could tear off a bundle, giving consumers the choice they apparently craved in how to fasten a garbage bag. You see how old this stuff is.
In the kitchen tool drawers we found medicine syringe parts. Not the kind that had needles. No. The kind that you used to squirt antibiotic far enough back in an infant’s throat that they had no choice but to swallow. Our kids are now in their twenties and none of these parts actually fit with each other. I may have been saving those, and the nearly useless garlic presses to create doughy strings for gingerbread people, or baked birds’ nests. I can’t imagine. Or, rather, I can imagine, but I certainly never followed through. New England thriftiness, or something darker?
To my credit there are some things (OK one thing) that had proved worth saving. There is the Revere triple-clad fry pan that lost its black composite handle. I used it as a stove-top to oven pan before I discovered the joys of Le Creuset, and last night as a cover for a handled fry pan. Apparently one thing I didn’t hoard was fry-pan / large pot covers.
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Self-Definition

Posted on July 11, 2013 by Susacadia
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Garlic scapes from our own garden.

Welcome to my world. This post will change over time, as I add my thoughts and ideas. Mostly this blog will be about yarn and fiber – the wooly fabric making kind, not the kind you eat. From time to time I will post patterns, pictures of my work, stories I am working on. I am also exploring the world of cooking – but not from a dietary fibery perspective. No, my cooking will focus on flavor, natural ingredients – but maybe not always organic.

Mostly this blot will be a chart of my thoughts as I move from a lifetime of being employed by others, to being self directed in my pursuits. I am embarking on a career as a freelancer, but the jobs I embark on will be of my own choosing. In the meantime, this is under construction. I’ll try to keep a map handy to guide us all.

But as Tolkien said: “All who wander are not lost.” I’m going to try enjoying the journey rather than focusing on the destination.

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Idea for a Brick & Mortar yarn shop

Posted on June 20, 2013 by Susacadia

I posted this in response to a question on Knitter’s Review. A user was asking for advice for a friend on starting up a local yarn shop. I’ve had this idea kicking around for a LONG time.

I’m going to put this out there, largely because I know I will never do it. But I’ve thought about it. A lot. I believe there is still a place for the local sellers of goods, yarn or otherwise. But what is needed is a new model that makes use of the competition rather than fights it. What follows is my train of thought and rationale.

I had a friend who railed against the internet and the fact that I bought so much yarn and spinning fiber from the ‘net. There are risks in that: can’t see the actual color; can’t feel the texture / hand of the fiber; can’t be sure of the quality. On the other hand it is direct from individual mom-and-pop producers / dyers / spinners / small mills. It is often cheaper than from many brick-and-mortars.

Then I thought of the eBay shops that have sprung up in every nook and cranny for people who want to sell their stuff in that giant yard sale site of the ‘net but are too petrified of e-commerce to take the risk. Why not merge the two ideas?

Do a sort of reverse eBay store. You, the vendor /shop-keeper of the brick and mortar take the risk and buy samples off line. Develop relationships with some online vendors (as I’m sure we all have) and showcase samples of their goods in your shop. Call it your stash. I would. People can drop by and take a look at what you have, have a feel, maybe even knit a sample. And, of course, place an order. You do the order fulfillment and tack on a handling fee.

You might choose to keep enough on hand to sell in an “emergency,” but there is no need to spend the thousands of dollars for inventory that are otherwise required for wholesale contracts. I envision a comfy setting, big coffee table, sofa, chairs, pile of yarn in the middle. People chatting, making swatches, eating pie ([;)] (or if it were my store, muffins).

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Graduation Shawls

Posted on October 28, 2012 by Susacadia

The first graduation shawl I knit was for a niece. It was made from some lovely mottled purple worsted weight wool I had gotten from The Dye Pot. It was a modified hap style shawl, using a garter triangle knit from point to a width just shy of shoulder to shoulder across the back of the neck. I knit a small saw-toothed edging across the wide part of the triangle. This continued as I picked up the short sides of the triangle to knit the border, which was a Madeira Lace done in garter stitch. After several repeats of this, I morphed into a modified Old Shale for about a quarter the length of the Madeira. Last of all I added an edge that continued the edging from the top, but added a medallion and some faggoting. Blocked it was gorgeous:

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This shawl is the next one – a smaller triangle, more Madeira, less Old Shale, but the same edging. It was done in a lace weight merino-cashmere from Colourmart. The third one explored proportions again and was knit from some handspun BFL from Highland Handmades in her Loki’s Whim colorway – an acid green with navy blue accents. Both these shawls are for nieces – one a recent graduate and the other with a year-old master’s degree.

My daughter is the only one who hasn’t gotten one. I asked her what colors she wanted. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “You’ve already got too many. I’ll just take one of yours.” As if she had been planning it, she snagged a multi-colored alpaca wool blend in natural greys, white, and browns. “This will go perfectly with that hat you made me.”

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My Years

Posted on September 4, 2010 by Susacadia

To begin with, I am a teacher in public schools.  As such my year starts in September and ends in August.  This cleverly mimics a normal week, where the workday starts with Monday and ends with Saturday and Sunday – the Weekend, a sort of mini-vacation, longer if a Monday holiday makes it a “long weekend”.  So in that sense my year starts with the work months and ends with vacation.  Just like the weekend, summer vacation is not really a time apart from the world, it is more just a change in occupation.

My fiber year is different.  It starts in June with the Fiber Frolic in Windsor and ends in September with the Common Ground Fair.  I had briefly thought that it would end with the Spa in Portland at the Double Tree Inn, but sadly they moved that to Freeport and used up 2 hotels for the spinning / knitting in public.  That was too much for me.  Wandering around one place seeing what people were up to was fun, but 2 boggled my mind.  Besides, who can schlep their stuff around two hotels, up streets, across parking lots in February in Maine, for godsake? 

So instead my fiber year ends in February with the Newport Spin-in with the busy hum of wheels and voices, the Yankee Swap, and (of course) the stash enhancement.  Each year we plead with each other “Don’t let me buy” but no one wants the guilt of depriving someone else of a potential treasure.  We live, after all, in the state that brought you “I should’ve bought it when I saw it at Marden’s.”  We know how to carpe diem.  There is a brief drought after the Spin-in while we save up for a blow out at the next years beginning.

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