Sapphire Blue

Ask my husband and he'll tell you that I've been "spinning my head off." I don't know why, but he loves to say it--maybe, like the girl in The Exorcist, he thinks I've been taken over by a supernatural force! To some extent, it's not far from the truth. Since I took my first spinning class in April, I've been somewhat eaten up with spinning. I read about it, I talk about it, I do it all the time.

I didn't expect that I would like it so much; in fact, I was, for a time, totally opposed to the idea of ever spinning my own wool. Why did I need to do that when there was a whole world full of beautiful wool and when knitting itself took long enough to do? The answer wasn't at all clear when I started, but it's becoming more so as I go along.

Many spinners spin simply for the love of playing with fiber and for me, this is certainly a great deal of the attraction. I've played with fiber for as long as I can remember, starting with the little potholder loom that I received many Christmases ago. After that, it was the little spool i-cord knitter that my mom made for me--five nails hammered into the top of a wooden thread spool. (I wonder how many young fiber artists out there have never seen thread on wooden spools!) Then came the crochet hook, the knitting needles and later, the sewing machine. It's all a part of my personal history. I file them under, Gifts From My Mother.

The sensual pleasures that I get from fiber, however, aren't the whole of it. I love the process a great deal, but I usually need a functional purpose to keep me going. Knitting miles of i-cord was dizzying at first, but the thrill of accomplishment faded when I realized that I couldn't put it to much use. So it is, that spinning skeins and skeins of beautifully hand-dyed fiber has lost some of it's fascination. I have a real need to make something real from it and now I have started to come to that place in my spinning when I can dictate, to some extent, what comes off the wheel and knit it up into a real wearable garment. After much contemplation, I've decided to knit the Shalom Cardigan by Meghan McFarlane of Involving the Senses.

Here's the progress so far:






The top photo is a basket full of my hand-dyed roving. The lower shots show a bobbin of singles that I spun, a skein of wool that resulted from plying three strands of singles together, and finally, the half knitted cardigan.