And another yarn… The Goddess

 

 

When I had finished the Vision Quest yarn, I just could not stop but had to go on to the next project. The task was to reflect on what I love about myself because without love for myself I cannot love others, and I cannot be creative.

Some time ago, I had followed a workshop about archetypes and I was reminded of the fact that two elements are quite predominant in me: “water” and “earth”. I use “air” a lot when I deal with life and “fire” is the suppressed element that I only “let out” every now and again. I do love it when all four elements are in balance and I live out of that perfect blend.

I was hit by the realization that the fibres I had used regularly here and there in my creations express the “water-earth” elements perfectly: the beautiful blend of silk that I call in my mind “Iona colors”:

 

 

So this would be the core of my yarn, the foundation.

In order to add “fire”, I thought of the gift I had received the day before from Suzy: yellow, red, orange, brown with lots of little added hues and glitter.

In my mind, the two fibres were clashing, colors and textures were so different but hey, I would try it out anyway. Here’s the spun “fire”:

Water-earth-fire next to each other:

So, what about “air”? Air is, well, airy and fluffy and light, clouds sailing lazily across the sky on a warm summer’s day. Ah, how about the soft fur of Harriette, our bunny rabbit, carded with white wool I had gathered on a retreat in Scotland?

 

And now all that was left to do was to assemble the three yarns = four elements:

 

As in “real life”, the “air” is very noticeable and here and there the “fire” jumps out!

I really love this yarn :-).

Then I had quite a bit of the “water-earth” and the “fire” yarn left and I thought, what would happen, if I assembled just the two?

It looks rather striking, I think and leaves me to wonder what my life would be like if I based it on “water-earth” and “fire”, leave out the “air” for a bit?

Here are the two yarns side by side:

Road of Trials…

in February I had inscribed for a course of creative spinning, The Journey to the Golden Fleece. Today I was planning to write to my mentor and say that I just couldn't continue with the course because I don't have enough time and I feel totally blocked and it's just not possible…. Then I got an encouraging email this morning and thought, well, maybe this is part of the journey after all and I'm not alone with these feelings!

 

 

So I decided to go ahead with what I had planned: expressing the moment I found my spiritual path in fibre. I discovered the path of the Ceile De, a Celtic order, seven years ago in a time when I was quite low and depressed. So I planned to use a lot of the Welsh black wool and a bit of the brilliant green raw silk I bought a little while ago. I had two approaches. I span the black wool just normally on my heavy handspindle and then the green silk alone on my lightweight topspindle, then I plied them together. That looked quite good although the green is much more noticable than I thought it would be…

 

Then I mixed the green silk with pale green merino wool. I don't have any proper mixing tools so I used my hand carders. I ended up with the green silk just showing up here and there in the finished yarn, much more what I had intended it to do.

 

 

And then I just stared at the rests of fibre on my sofa, black, brown, white wool and some brilliantly coloured blue and green ramie that I got as a gift with my order from Hilltop Cloud Katie.

I started putting them randomly on my carders, first the darker colours, then blending in the white and finally the green and blue. They made three reasonable rolag type thingies (never really done this before, you see!). I'm supposed to clean the house in preparation for guests tomorrow but I couldn't stop and started spinning the fibre. The thread that wound itself around my spindle touched me deeply in my heart: the colours that came out are the colours of the isle of Iona in the Hebrides and strongly linked to our tradition. On Iona I started my spiritual path consciously… This yarn isn't finished yet. I will ply this with white locks of a fleece of a lamb in the French Alps and then post a picture of the end result! I was quite taken aback, though, by this onslaught of inspiration and now definitely need some chocolate :-)…

 

St. Brighid's Well, Iona

White Strand of the Monks, Iona

 

 

Posté avec Blogsy

Three yarns

The Boring Yarn

The Anger and Frustration yarn

The Third Yarn

Well, I am still not totally happy but it was an experience…

 

Posté avec Blogsy

Embarking on the journey

 

When I started on this journey, I had a great idea how to design my first yar. Thinking back to the time before I embarked on my spiritual journey, I came across an avatar I used which expresses this pre-adventure me quite well:

So I decided to work with the colour scheme of this gothic girl I was for a while, black, red and hints of other colours witha bit of sparkle. I found fibres to work with and waited for them to arrive.

But only one shipping made it, the rest never turned up! So I had to rethink and got a bit upset. Time went by and I ended up spinning a yarn just because I felt I had to (very much the old me, by the way, feeling obliged and doiing things against my will and better judgement). This is it:

 

I wasn't happy because it was just a boring old yarn in colours I didn't like…

So I bought some sparkely paillettes and nylon to add them to the dark purple fibre. That would work much better, I thought. I did manage to get the paillettes on nylon thread but when the doorbell rang and I had to put it down, it all tangled up and I just couldn't get it detangled, try as I might! I thought that in the end I wouldn't be able to use the nylon anyway as it seemed unmanagable, so I gave up this path, too.

 

 

In the end, I got quite angry because nothing seemed to work out. One evening, I just grabbed the fibres I had, separated them roughly and thought, how can I get an effect into THAT? And I just started twisting andspinning and overtwisting the fibres and ended up with an effect I rather liked! The yarn is very thick but structured and looks good to me.

To be continued…

 

Posté avec Blogsy