The Independent Stitch

Walking Nature Home: A Life's Journey, by Susan J. Tweit

This is a stop on the blog tour for Susan Tweit's new book, Walking Nature Home: A Life's Journey, being published this month by the University of Texas Press. I've previously blogged snippets about this work.

The previous stop in this tour was March 27 at Janet Riehl's wide-ranging and delightful Riehlife. The next stop will be March 31 at Sharman Apt Russell's Love of Place blog. Both are exceptional, thoughtful, and delightful writers. Be sure to check them out—along with the rest of the tour, listed at the end of this post.

______

Yesterday, I returned from a five-day writing retreat at a cabin on the Poudre River. I've never done anything like this retreat before; it was wonderful. Three writers shared the rent for what was intended to be a four-day session. Because of the weather, we had mostly overcast skies for the time we planned to be there. We got an extra day because we were lightly snowed in.

On the final, bonus night, I awoke about five in the morning and glanced out the window to find the real-life magic of more stars than I've been able to see for years, even when I've driven to the foothills outside of town, beyond the obvious light pollution (and I live in an area with relatively few streetlights).

I stayed awake in the dark for over an hour, walking from one window to another, seeing how many stars were visible in each direction. I felt like I'd been given an opportunity to glance into a forgotten part of my soul. It's a part I need to find a way to locate more often.

__

When Susan Tweit was in her early twenties, she was diagnosed with an unspecified autoimmune disorder and told she would likely live between two and five more years. This book is the story of how she learned to make a life, and to love and find love in return, under a more immediate sentence of death than most of us are required to carry in daily consciousness.

Walking Nature Home is a strong and gentle book. It’s stronger than spider silk, which means, for a textile person like me, that it has more tensile strength than steel. And it’s delicately inexorable, pulling the reader forward less by the power of its narrative, as strong as that is, than by the grace of its telling and the unfolding wonder of the wide-ranging connections it makes between the elements of the world we live in, from ourselves to stars to microbes.

It's an easy read . . . meaning it flows beautifully, not that it is simple. It's full of surprises. It's a book whose presence continues to vibrate after its last page has been reached.

I read with sticky notes to mark favorite passages. Instead of dumping superlatives on the screen in an attempt to convince you to read the book, I've selected a handful of the flagged bits in my copy, each edited down to a nugget—one that unavoidably fails to reflect the delights that can be found only by viewing it in context. Each of these fragments, while it stands well on its own, is like a single note or chord extracted from a symphony.

Please: do something very nice for yourself—read Walking Nature Home and experience the resonance of these thoughts within their natural frames of reference, and within your life.

______

"I instinctively treated what others labeled as a disease not as an affliction, infection, or enemy but as a teacher, a source of wisdom that spoke in a language I might not yet be able to understand, but which I was certain carried crucial lessons I needed to hear." (p. 24)

*

"In a sense my approach [to studying my health] is modeled on the organisms I studied in my fieldwork: plants. . . . Sometime in the long millennia of adaptation, big sagebrush . . .  developed a way to communicate using its signature scent. . . . [It] eventually developed a whole vocabulary of volatile compounds, including one chemical that acts like an aromatic air-raid siren to warn its community of grazing insect invasions; when other plant species pick up this signal, they flood their tissues with indigestible compounds." (pp. 32-33)

*

"I found part-time work cleaning houses and began lingering in the empty rooms after I finished, sitting in the dark and inhaling their fragrances, warming myself in the ashes of other people's lives." (p. 47)

*

"When I examine the stars, I'm not just looking for the myths and dreams we assign to the scattershot figures of the constellations, or for the flares of exploding supernovas, . . . or other hints of the formation of the universe. I'm seeking a kind of intuitive wisdom that my rational mind struggles to accept, much less explain." (p. 51)

*

"Apparently I didn't know myself intimately, if I was surprised by the feelings I heard in the silence of my journey. It seemed I hadn't been observing myself with acuity. Perhaps that was the message in the chill of Raynaud's [phenomenon]: slow down, thaw out, sit still, and listen. . . . Walking the days alone but for Sadie [a friend's dog] had forced me to pay attention. If I kept my awareness tuned within, I might yet hear what I needed to understand my health and, more importantly, my life." (p. 55)

*

"The five hundred to one thousand species and countless individual microbes that make up our gastrointestinal consortium, for instance, aid us in obtaining nutrition by breaking down carbohydrates we could not otherwise process. . . . These other lives interact so intimately with our existence that what we think of as 'I,' a solitary individual, is in reality 'we,' a thriving community. No wonder we have an inborn affinity for the rest of nature. It is who we are. The bonds we are born with to other species can't help but nurture our ability to link to each other." (p. 88)

*

"I grew up in the language of science; I know its idioms and its jargon. I also grew up with myth and star lore, the archetypical tales that illuminate humanity's dimensions in words that ring and stir and rhyme. Both shape my view of the world. . . ." (p. 107)

*

"Their hollow innards make bird bones ideal for musical instruments. The variation in the strutlike internal structures that strengthen these airy bones results in characteristic sounds produced by the bones of different species. Some birds' bones sound eerily like the living species' own calls." (p. 119)

*

"I came to love the desert for its spectacular contrasts and sudden magic, for the creativity shown by all the lives that call it home. But no matter my resolve or my efforts . . . I never quite felt at home. . . . Homesickness may not be a diagnosable illness, but it is more than mere sentiment. . . . Each time we draw a breath, we inhale our surroundings." (pp. 123, 124, 125)

______

This is a story of discovering the importance of, and finding a way to be at, home. It is Susan's story, telling of her personal journey to find her unique home. But it's a good bet that if you let her show you her way, you will discover new ways to illuminate your own.

Walking Nature Home goes on my short shelf of books, the ones I won't part with. The book's place there is alongside Thoreau. Walking Nature Home is also a book that I, who rarely re-read books, will be reading again almost immediately.

If you decide to get the book and would like to share your experience with it, let me know: I'd love to hear.

_____

Table of contents and chapter sample of Walking Nature Home
The book is available everywhere (ISBN 978-0-292-71917-0).

Here's the link for ordering directly from the University of Texas Press. As I write this, there is a discount—hardcover for a paperback price—and personal experience indicates they ship very quickly.

Susan Tweit's website

Susan's Walking Nature Home blog—always worth reading

Illustrator Sherrie York's blog, with regular insight into her creative process

And here's the complete set of blog tour activities, as of today:

• 3/23 Susan Tweit's introductory post
• 3/25 Women Writing the West's blog
• 3/27 Janet Riehl's Riehllife village wisdom newsmagazine blog
• 3/29 That's where you are now
• 3/31 Sharman Apt Russell and friends' Love of Place blog
• 4/2 Knitting wizard and author Donna Druchunas' Sheep to Shawl blog
• 4/4 Brush and Baren, the blog of artist and nature journal publisher Sherrie York, who also is the illustrator of Walking Nature Home.
• 4/6 Artist, writer, gardener, and college professor Susan Tomlinson's The Bicycle Garden blog
• 4/7 Women's Memoirs, the web site of memoir authors and coaches Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett
• 4/8 Sculptor Susan Gallacher-Turner's blog
• 4/9 Teleseminar with Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett, 6 p.m. MT. This is a free 20-30 minute interview where Susan will answer questions from readers around the country. Anyone can listen in by calling 1-712-432-0600 and using the access code 998458#
• 4/10 Telling HerStories: The Broad View, the group blog of Story Circle Network
• 4/12 Back to Susan's blog with a wrap-up of the tour, plus, Susan says, a surprise!

Thursday night spinning

The sun porch at the cabin this week was a bit bright for the computer during large chunks of the day, and too dark for spinning at night. But I needed to spin more on Thursday evening.

I pointed the portable light I brought with me at the stone floor so I could see the drafting zone against it. Visibility wasn't perfect, but I could see well enough for a comfortable half-hour of smooth spinning. (That's a Navajo-Churro Sheep t-shirt.)

(Photo copyright Judy Fort Brenneman)

Things I know about spinning that I don't know I know

Having spun with a lot of less-than-ideal fiber in my life, largely because of when and where I began exploring the craft and partly because of my interest in rare breeds (where survival takes a higher priority position than fleece quality, I find there are things I know how to do that I'm not at all aware of.

Take, for example, one of the fleeces I've been working with.

It's from a breed that is raised primarily for meat—one of the Down breeds. The fleece is nearly a throwaway, not because it's inherently bad—not at all—but because the current dominant market does not value it. The wool is fine enough to be worn next to the skin (wild guess: 25 microns, possibly finer, and yes, that's the skinny end of the range for a Down wool; it's potentially exquisite) and exceptionally springy, with crimp I wish I had the equipment to photograph.

The sample I have is not great handspinning fiber, and that's neither the sheep's nor the grower's fault. The sheep had nothing to say about the way it was shorn, and the grower probably can't sell the wool for enough to pay for the shearing.

The jumbled, indistinct staples obscure the presence of second cuts and neps. I can catch a few of the second cuts and pull them out as I pick the fiber, but because of the wool's springiness and crimp the short bits hang on stubbornly, or drag out good wool along with stumpy stuff. There are a whole lot of small bits: only frustrating to try to eliminate. The fiber lengths vary between 1 and 2.75 inches (2.5 and 7cm). That's a very wide range, attributable to the shearing.

The only reasonable way to prepare this wool is by carding, because it's soft, short, and irregular in length. Softness directs me to the fine-toothed carders. My nine rolags aren't pretty, but I can pick out a few more second cuts as I prepare them.

And then I spin.

Ideally, a fiber like this would make a perfect woolen yarn: bouncy, full of air, resilient. In this case, a woolen draft would be an exercise in discovering new types of unprintable vocabulary. The preparation isn't, and can't be, even enough to draft out smoothly. So I use a short forward draw, a worsted technique. I'm sacrificing some of the fiber's inherent qualities to compensate for the shearing-related drawbacks in this particular sample.

A huge advantage to the worsted technique is the amount of control it gives me. I stretch out the fibers as I'm drafting, which also lets me thin out, and securely incorporate in the twist, many of the tiny neppy areas and all of the shorter fibers, which might otherwise clump up into loose slubs.

Most of the second cuts arrive at the drafting zone looking (and feeling) like small elephants. If I were spinning a thicker yarn with less control, they'd simply hide in the fiber mass, get caught in the twist, and turn into lumps that would look like huge pills. They'd also make twist build up on either side of them, producing harsh, wiry stretches of yarn.

As it is, I can feel them before I see them, then pluck them away from the main fibers, which are stretched under a bit of tension now and so are okay with letting go. The surrounding fibers get messed up a little, but in the grand scheme of this yarn the resulting irregularity is a non-issue.

By the time I finish my nine rolags, I've eliminated quite a few potential bumps.

For this much yarn (singles):

Obviously, there's still a lot of unevenness, but the strand is solid and as good as it's likely to get, considering.

The plied yarn:

It's far, far from perfect, but it's serviceable. It tells me I'd be delighted to see more wool from this sheep, or its cousins, in another year.

Any contemporary book talking about how to handle a fleece like this would recommend woolen processing. What I know about spinning is this: how to choose each step based on the one that came before. As I moved through the process and my options, this fleece became a puzzle to solve: which steps would let it be the best yarn possible, despite its shortcomings?

I didn't know that I knew that. I take it for granted.

And here's a view of the sun porch I'm working on, taken by one of the writers I'm sharing the cabin with when she went out for a late afternoon walk:

I was spinning the yarn described here. Pretty mellow, despite the challenges.

(Photo of me copyright Judy Fort Brenneman.)

The gray/grey "Suffolk" puzzle

One of the wools I'm spinning this week puzzles me to the extreme. It's sold as gray (U.K. grey) Suffolk, called in the marketing materials either "sliver roving" or "tops." It's sliver. It's sure not top or roving, and I question the Suffolk part as well, even though two of the major retail sources show photos of Suffolk sheep along with the fiber.

Reason for spinning? A natural gray Suffolk fleece would be a very interesting phenomenon indeed. See notes below for why. The question remains open whether such a thing exists.

Fiber evaluation

Let's get a picture of some fiber before I talk about the reasons for my puzzlement.

What we've got on top there is a piece of the sliver. I've pulled off a fiber-length: just below are a few fibers that I used to check myself (like pinching yourself to be sure what you're seeing is real: tug on both ends of a tiny group of fibers and they don't drift apart . . . yup, these fibers are about 8 inches / 20cm long). Some of the fibers have a bit of crimp; others have almost none. There are a variety of grays—actually, a full range from white to black, with most in the middle grays. There's quite a lot of kemp, the short, white, bristly fibers.

The white lock below is Suffolk-for-real. It's on the long side for a Suffolk, 3.5 inches / 9cm, white, and has a nicely observable and consistent crimp pattern.

We're comparing a bit of apples-to-oranges here, in more ways than one, because we've got sliver and a lock, but there's plenty of info to cover the basics.

Muttering to myself

Faced with a conundrum, I go back to the basics, even though I've spun a bunch of Suffolk over the years.

Suffolk is raised primarily for meat. The wool has been, historically, a byproduct. The breed originated in England and is now raised in many places. There are lots of Suffolks in the U.S.

The breed association in the British Isles doesn't talk about the wool at all. It doesn't matter. Meat all the way.

The breed standards for the United States Suffolk Association have this to say about the fleece: "The fleece should be dense, free of dark fiber and not shading into dark hair or wool."

As the very last comment under "History," the U.S. breed society gets a little more specific: "Fleece weights from mature ewes are between five and eight pounds (2.25-3.6 kg) with a yield of 50 to 62 percent. The fleeces are considered medium wool type with a fiber diameter of 25.5 to 33.0 microns and a spinning count of 48 to 58. The staple length of Suffolk Fleece ranges from 2 to 3.5 inches (5-6.75 cm)." [I think they meant 5-8.75cm.]

All the other sources of fiber information are in the same range, as is my experience.

There's a reason large-scale breeders don't want dark fibers in the fleece; the interlopers significantly decrease the value of the byproduct wool when it's sold for commercial processing. Dark fibers more commonly appear in dark-faced breeds of sheep, like the Suffolk, than in white-faced breeds. And Suffolks are more prone to having dark fibers among the white than some of the other dark-faced breeds.

A gray Suffolk would be an unwelcome oddity. To be salvaged, it would need to be kept separate from the main group of Suffolks. To produce enough gray Suffolk to make a commercially available sliver, you'd need a bunch of sheep. Many things here do not compute.

And then: Suffolks are not noted for having kemp.

Summary

Gray "Suffolk" sliver compared to my experience of Suffolk:

• way too long
• wrong color
• contains kemp
• wrong crimp pattern
• way too coarse

I have no locks to examine for shape, but I'm guessing the originating fleece for this sliver looked more like a Swaledale.

Maybe this sliver is called "Suffolk" not because it came from a Suffolk sheep, but because it was grown by some other sort of sheep in Suffolk, England?

If anyone knows anything about this fiber, or who we could reach easily to ask, I'm incredibly curious.

Spinning tests

Now. Spinning a fiber is something else entirely. Fiber can be spun on its own terms, without being identified. Keep in mind these are samples.

First, I spun from the end of the sliver, worsted-style (short forward draw). This was the path of least resistance, both for the fiber and for my personal spinning preferences. I only controlled the fiber's unevenness minimally. I wanted to see what it would do.

The result would weave nicely into a heavy jacket fabric, would work well in a rug, or. . . .

Then, because I'm either stubborn or perverse or both, I decided to try woolen. Because if this really was Suffolk, woolen ought to bring out the best in the fiber (even though I knew that the staple length was too long, the fiber was too coarse, the crimp pattern was wrong, and so on . . . I said "perverse," didn't I?).

Even the carding set-up looked absurd, although I card longer fibers than some people do, and the rolags themselves were pretty.

The spinning, however, went badly and the results were abominable. I knew before I started that the stuff wouldn't draft out evenly, but I tried it anyway. I didn't waste much wool on this experiment.

So I took my pretty-enough rolags and used a draft that was sort of a worsted-style short forward draw but let some twist into the drafting area, so I was half drafting against the twist. That gave me some control but let me produce a bouncier yarn. It would make a good barn or gardening sweater (over a sturdy shirt) or a cushion or something:

And that was the end of my experiments.

Conclusion

If that gray fiber is Suffolk, then the thing with ears in this photo is a furry rock:

And I would LOVE to know what the gray fiber is, and why they are calling it Suffolk.

Addendum

To clear my fiberish palate, I pulled out a bit of wool that is definitely what it is called, clamped the two-row peasant combs to the table, and prepared something nice and smooth to spin next. Note that if you are ever combing fiber at a cabin in the woods and have forgotten your diz, a knitting needle gauge works fantastically well.

Oh, and we're being blizzarded in. I might get to use my snowshoes.

On spinning equipment

In response to my post two days ago, Joanne commented:

Whenever I see all your equipment, I am awed. I thought I was over the top with my several sets of cards, 2 sets of combs, and other paraphernalia. I am, in comparison, obviously a neophyte!

I started to write a long reply to her, and then realized it needed to be a full post.

First, I've been at this for decades! I got my first wheel thirty-five years ago, and I learned the basics on a spindle before that.

This was "once upon a time," in the dark ages, when it was hard to get any spinning fiber—let alone prepared, dyed fiber!—and when in order to get a wheel you pretty much had to get together a dozen friends and place a wholesale order with Ashford. Which we did. Shipped from New Zealand. Arrived in boxes. In pieces. Unfinished. Most of us had never seen a working spinning wheel (only the ones in museums). So we learned the parts by putting our wheels together and finishing them (I learned French polish for mine.)

And then we taught ourselves to spin, primarily with the help of Elsie Davenport. Ah, photo op: Elsie is here with me at the cabin in the woods. No, I didn't bring her in person, nor did I haul my whole library up the mountain. It's just that Elsie Davenport is one of the spiritual parents of this project I'm working on.

Aside: I note in the new Spin-Off that Olive Linder died recently, at the age of 91. She and her husband Harry were pioneers who helped twentieth-century folks who had been disconnected from the spinning tradition recover this fundamental set of skills. In order to figure out what to do with cotton, the Linders had to buy a whole darn BALE of the stuff. Read what they wrote to find out exactly how big a bale is and what they did with it. What gifts they gave us in their writing! As did Bette Hochberg, and a bunch of other folks. Some day maybe I'll stroll a blog post past my bookshelves. But today: a bow of gratitude in Olive Linder's direction.

Second, and most importantly, I've added equipment as I've needed it. Everything I have is here for a specific reason. I can go ten years without adding anything.

Yes, I have five sets of hand carders. I have two each of fine and coarse full-sized carders: I have worn out one pair of each, although I still use the old ones, mended. But I'm not about to subject those veterans to the amount of work I'm doing this week (nor risk that they'll break again when I'm 45 miles from their alternatives). I've brought their younger siblings, which are at least twenty years old themselves. I also have a pair of small cotton carders. (I'm a curved-back carder person. Some spinners are flat-backed carder people.)

For the current project, I bought two new sets of combs. Within less than a year. I'd been trying to make do with what I had, which had worked perfectly well for a long time, and it wasn't going well enough with my new assignment. I added one new pair first, which handled part of the gap. Then I added the second pair. I trust I now have my combing needs covered forever.

I don't have a drum carder. I bought one nearly thirty years ago, and it wasn't the right kind for me (again, I got what was available at the time; it never did what I wanted). I ended up hating it for a long time and then giving it away to a spinner who had different requirements and is happy with it. Purchase of a different drum carder has not made it to the top of the budget list.

I also have "only" two wheels: the Ashford Traditional I got as a kit in the early 1970s and the Reeves Norwegian that was a gift from the SOAR community, coordinated by Dale Pettigrew, for my 40th birthday, which fell during SOAR twenty years ago. (I'm still stunned by that birthday; I have not recovered at all.)

That's also when I got the mini-combs, which I love, as a gift from Trudy and Jan Van Stralen of Louet. They have been so useful that I have not often been inclined to reach, or wish, for any other combs, even though I have had access to a set of English combs and I love the way they prepare fiber.

Did I mention that in order to do the current project, in addition to buying two new pairs of combs, I also tore down a wall in the house? Otherwise I didn't have room for the boxes of fiber. . . . I'm sure I haven't mentioned that. I did take pictures. I have been saving the details of the wall for after the project is finished. Assuming the project gets finished in the foreseeable future. There is a deadline. I need to be working.

I've borrowed a friend's Lendrum for this project, and yes, I'd love to own it. It does a superb job at both traveling compactly and spinning. I've always liked Lendrum wheels. If I had time, money, and room enough, there are several other wheels I'd like to have handy to use, and yes, I'd put them to work. But I already have two full-time-resident spinning wheels in a relatively small living space.

What I do possess in sheer abundance is handspindles! nostepinnes! niddy-noddies!

And wool.

Some of which I'd better spin right now.

__

This morning there was a Downy woodpecker at the feeder. Because it was reasonably big (though small for a woodpecker) and not all the way across the road, I could get a positive i.d. even with my eyes and without my field glasses.

Messing around (literally) with dog hair

First, it did snow last night. We got about an inch—not enough for me to pull out the showshoes, but great for highlighting the neighbors' presence.

Lots of chickadees, some sparrows, a couple of tricolored blackbirds, a blue jay, crows, and some Steller's jays. I don't have my bird glasses with me . . . sort of wish I did, but the point is to get work done, not enjoy the environment.

[Addendum: Kit, who can see better than I can, says she thinks we have two kinds of juncos. Based on coloring and behavior, I'll bet I just saw a woodpecker across the road. The folks who own the cabin left all the liquor but there are no bird glasses in the two cases I've found. They must have intuited which distraction is the greater threat to my productivity.]

But it's impossible not to enjoy being here. This is the "other" sun room (the one that I have not set my office up in), with my yoga mat:

This is a close-up of the mat. Isn't it a fine location for morning yoga? Yes, that's a cardwoven strap (5/2 mercerized cotton). I wove it before I started doing yoga, and I've been doing yoga since 1977. The band has had a lot of earlier lives, including one as a guitar strap.

One of my fellow writing-retreat-ers is in that sunroom now, filling her morning pages.

Ah, yes. Work.

I warmed up yesterday by doing some writing about wool, and by spinning samples of dog hair:

Left to right, those are Big White Dog (livestock guardians, mostly Akbash, maybe a little Kuvasz), our Tussah (likely Australian cattle dog and Golden retriever, but who knows?), and our Ariel (mostly Border collie, with some spaniel in the ears and the coat quality).

Samoyed is the quintessential, exquisite dog fiber to spin. I don't have any. But there's lots to play with in what I do have.

The Big White Dogs are double-coated. It was unthinkable to even consider separating the fiber qualities, and thus impossible to either blend or draft evenly. The combination of outer- and undercoat makes a terrific textured yarn (see the next photo).

Tussah (the light brown) was hardest to spin—all undercoat, and short! fine! Again, impossible to get an even preparation or smooth drafting. I almost gave up, but as of the next day I'd consider doing some more.

Ariel (the near-black) was easiest, because while her hair is fine it also has some length to it.

None of the resulting skeins smells like dog. Only the Big White Dogs had, in part, the stiff hairs that I expect to hold the odor, and even their skein just smells freshly washed.

Ariel was the only one who didn't leave me looking like I'd been sitting under a shedding dog for a month. Fortunately, I also brought this:

The next photo demonstrates one of the reasons that black sheep have been anathema to people who grow lots of wool to sell for commercial processing:

A bit of Tussah and of Big White Dog got spun in with Ariel (in this case, it's the red and white "contaminating" the black, instead of the more normal black "contaminating" the white). Even one off-colored fiber can ruin a yard of high-priced fine white wool fabric. Large growers keep the black sheep on different pasture to avoid the addition of stray odd-colored fibers, and they also would probably welcome all-white herding dogs (all-white livestock guardians are easier to find).

Those of us who love the wools of unusual colors and textures need to keep the market for them going. Mass production isn't going to warm to them any time soon, if ever. Depending on our moods, our needs, and the availability of the materials, we can hand-process unusual fibers and we can make sure part of our stash includes breed- and flock-specific yarns.

I'd better get to work. The cabin was cold last night, but once I got my pallet on the floor all cozy it was hard to leave the nest of comforters. I ended up dashing out at about 6 to get my computer and  wrote a bit in bed for a while. And then I fell back asleep for another hour.

The question is which rare sheep breed I'll enjoy today. . . . Let's see. . . .

Off to the woods with wool

Having tested out the site in January, I've returned to this spot 30 miles up a canyon to focus on getting a book closer to done. It won't get DONE done this week, but I should make significant progress.

Here's what the car looked like this morning at home:

That's about half the stuff I could have brought for this one job. If I go through this batch, I'll take a trip back down the mountain mid-week and swap boxes.

Here's my workspace for the time being:

Some of the boxes are in the entryway. I'm just bringing in what I need most immediately.

There are three of us here. We're sharing the rent on this space so we can all get projects moved along. I'm in a different space than I used when we were here before. We didn't stay overnight last time, so this time we needed to rework the logistics. I'm sleeping on the floor in the living room, and I get one of the sunrooms (there are two) for my office.

The weather forecast has been ominous, but I've lived in Colorado long enough not to believe anything about the weather unless I'm looking directly at it. We got a few flurries when we reached the 20-mile point in the canyon, and the wind was blowing pretty hard as we moved stuff into the cabin. Now it's only about 40 percent overcast with no meteorological excitement at all. Just a nice bunch of breeze.

That's probably because I brought my snowshoes. It's been a really long time since I used them, and if we got snowed in up here and I didn't have them with me I'd be seriously disappointed.

Well, I'm here to work, so that's what it's time to do.

Does anyone else find this juxtaposition of equipment amusing?

Fiber book review: Fiber Gathering, by Joanne Seiff

As of today, this year's schedule for the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival has not been posted online and the catalog has not appeared in my mailbox. Even when I don't get to go to the festival, I read through what's happening there, including the whole catalog and all of the ads (just FYI, advertisers . . . ). Yet it's close to time for the announcements and the dreaming.

I'm not big into bumper stickers, although this is what the back of my car—with a home base 1,679 miles (2702km) from the Howard County Fairgrounds—looks like:

Most of my experience at wool festivals has been through working at them—staffing the Spin-Off booth (spinning all weekend! meeting spinners! giving impromptu spinning lessons!), teaching workshops, giving talks. Yet the festivals have always felt more fun than work, and here's Joanne Seiff's new Fiber Gathering: Knit, Crochet, Spin, and Dye More than 25 Projects Inspired by America's Festivals to do a good job of capturing why.

I'd have subtitled the book differently: something like Fiber Gathering: Get Your Festival Fix Any Time, with Projects and Recipes to Stoke Your Anticipation and Enjoyment, Even Get Encouraged to Start Your Own. That's too long for the book databases, but gives a better idea of the book's tone.

Disclaimer: I've been egging Joanne for several years on as she outlined, researched, and wrote this book, and then went through the trial of finding the right publisher for it (she succeeded). My daughter and I and a few other folks even had dinner with Joanne and her husband while they were documenting the Estes Park festival. Nondisclaimer: I hadn't seen any of the material until I got my copy last week.

I started writing this post at the local coffee shop on Monday, enjoying the book's reminder of how many good memories I have of Maryland and Taos and Estes Park and Black Sheep, wondering when the catalog will show up in the mailbox, thinking about the wisdom of using the free airline ticket (about to expire) that I got for being bumped from my return flight from last year's festival, pondering whether a trip to the festival will help me fill the information and supply gaps for a book I'm working on (it probably will, and that will probably be the factor that most influences my decision).

Anyway, whether I go or not, I love the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, and Taos, and Estes Park, and Black Sheep, and New York, and the other festivals I've had the good fortune to participate in or, occasionally, just attend. Joanne's book, with her husband's terrific photographs, captures the magic and diversity and community of these seasonal, yet stable and recurring, events.

The book is as diverse and story-filled as the festivals themselves. Joanne gives a personal introduction to each of the ten festivals and the sheep-shearing event she and her husband traveled to and documented. The book is also packed with sidebars—about food, and sheepdogs, and spinning techniques, and an introduction to dyeing, and tips for washing the WHOLE fleece that might follow a visitor home—and ends with thoughts about building your own fiber gathering.

Fiber festivals bring together more creative energy than I encounter in any other setting. The communities they form extend over time and space, belying their ephemeral nature. In addition to Joanne's personal comments, there are lots of sidebars here that include recipes and bits of knowledge that festival-goers come across. You never know what you'll learn when you stay at a fiber festival long enough to go beneath the surface.

There are also a number of appealing projects in a variety of techniques from designers across the United States. Some will show up better in a blog photo than others. Like Annie Modesitt's alpaca ruana:

You'll need to go to the book itself for a number of others, like Terri Shea's Fishtail Vest.

I was especially drawn to the crocheted projects, including Cathy Adair-Clark's socks:

 

And when I took my copy of the book to my knitting group on Monday night, a clear winner among those present was Chrissy Gardiner's baby set:

Seeing those baby toes reminds me to mention that I like the "real people" and "real places" quality of the photos. They add an enormous amount to the flavor of the book as an integrated project—in part because, as Joanne notes, the most important part of the festivals is the people.

Thanks to Joanne Seiff and Jeff Marcus (and everyone who helped them out) for logging so many miles and sorting through so many ideas, words, and images to let more folks bring home world of fiber festivals. It's great to have this appear as winter wanes: time to think of what to plant in the garden, and to wonder what fresh fleece and other tools and materials will enrich the coming year.

In short: This is a fun book. And it catches the spirit of the festivals, which is quite a trick to pull off.

Photos of hope and new horizons

Things have been quiet around here while I plug and unplug cords, move equipment, and calculate (without sufficient knowledge) power draw parameters.

There's hope:

And new horizons (still wrapped in a protective covering):

Amazingly, after I figured out that I didn't have to move the old CPU in order to make room for it plus a new CPU (the new computer's calculating parts are inside the monitor frame) it took about five minutes to set this system up, although I spread that out over a couple of hours because I did some office cleaning, too (to look at the office, you might not be able to tell that).

It's hooked up. It's been turned on. The major design-related software has been installed. The printer has been plugged in, and the computer knew exactly where to find it without a hitch.

?

!

__

Spinner's note: In the first photo, behind the box, those are St. Blaise double-row combs, attached with C clamps to my daughter's child's chair, which is a perfect combing bench (and one of the most versatile pieces of furniture, in many regards, that we've ever lived with . . . thanks yet again, Mom!). There are other sets of combs, of different types from other makers, in the room but these are the ones that have been on call lately.

The miracle is that, with multiple pairs of wool combs within reach, at the peak of PC frustration I only ripped up an old phone book.

Preview: Susan Tweit's Walking Nature Home

I've just finished reading Susan Tweit's new book, Walking Nature Home: A Life's Journey. I ended it wishing I could order a carton all at once and send copies to lots of specific people. I'll have to settle for telling folks about it. It's being officially published next week and I'm part of an upcoming blog tour, so I will be putting together more detailed thoughts then, but I also want to make a few quick comments now.

The University of Texas Press is releasing the book as part of its Louann Atkins Temple Women and Culture Series. I like that such a series exists. The book could also have been released by several other presses I can think of; it seems to have found a home with an outfit that is doing a good job of honoring the work. The press's website has a discount and they are very fast at shipping. Buying direct from a publisher is an especially beneficial move right now, by the way.

The Louann Atkins Temple Women and Culture Series appears to contain a broad and diverse selection of books—and yet Susan's seems like a leap of faith for the press to have taken within that context. Most of the titles look like scholarly nonfiction. While Walking Nature Home is filled with solid information on a variety of topics, it definitely falls within the realm of personal narrative, or memoir.

Anyone who's noticed my photos of the books I'm reading has seen the sticky notes. I read with stickies and/or a pencil handy. I took the photo above when I'd just started the book. Here's what it looks like now:

I ran out of the nice, neat reading flags.

Some of those marked passages will undoubtedly factor into what I write at blog tour time, although I wasn't reading with the tour in mind. I was just reading. The flagged phrases, sentences, or paragraphs strongly "spoke to my condition," to use a Quaker concept. The flags always indicate ideas I want to come back to.

Printmaker Sherrie York made the illustrations that begin each chapter. I've been following Sherrie's blog for quite a while, enjoying the way she makes both tiny one-color linoleum cuts and larger, multi-layered, intricate works.

Looking for a good read that will stick with you? One that you won't want to have come to an end, but you will finish because you also don't want to stop reading? Order a copy of Walking Nature Home, or ask your library to get one and let you be first in line to read it.