For a long time now, my enjoyment of writing has deserted me; lots of strands of thoughts but nothing that has made it to the keyboard. Maybe it’s that time seems to pass very quickly, together with threads of life, with their invariable ‘knots’ that weave their way through the days and demand attention. These are often very substantial and create correspondingly large bottlenecks that mean something else becomes displaced. Space of all kinds seems to have become at a premium.
Still, notwithstanding all that, each day is a new one with new possibilities, I try to remember. Around the necessary framework of commitments that concern others, I plan very little and so, often end up doing something I hadn’t thought much about beforehand; this new blog is an example of that; something I felt like doing. Although I began this morning by wondering where I could buy clamps to hold a pair of wool combs, I’ve ended up writing this via finishing a small hand-spinning project and hanging out some washing. A nice, varied itinerary for the day, so to speak. I suspect going forward, though, I am about to begin stumbling my way through this as last time I tried WordPress, I gave up because I couldn’t make it do what I wanted it to……time will tell whether I have more success this time around.
Since I spend a lot of my time making something or other that’s textile-related, today was no different. A couple of days ago, I dug out my Hackle (a rather dangerous-looking, spiky bit of equipment) to try processing some coloured, ‘Tops’ (prepared and dyed – in this case – sheep’s fleece). I wanted to try combining several colours but I haven’t used a Hackle for a very long time and the result wasn’t 100% successful but, I managed to spin the result. There were a couple of other colours left in the bag so I decided, rather randomly, to just spin them together and then ply it (twist it together) with the Hackled results. All that process completed, I now have a length of multicoloured yarn.
’Tops’, in this case, from Shetland sheep.
This is the Hackle. When not in use it is stored with a bar across the top.
The wooden thing here is called a Niddy-Noddy (after the way it is rocked in order to load the yarn, I believe).
The yarn isn’t very easy to see at this point but will be easier when it’s turned into a ball.
Since I now have to work out what to do next with this bit of writing, I think I’ll finish with a plant and hope the blog post makes it, in intelligible form, into the big, wide world…….
The new addition to our family…..
Strands and Threads 