A dream of yarn & more

Once Upon A Time, a half a life ago, I lived in a tiny apartment with a fireplace and a balcony that looked out over a small house with an apple tree in its garden. I used to sit and look down on that tiny white cottage with its detached garden and one glorious apple tree spreading its branches over the garden and daydream of what my life could be like one day. Gardens, flowers, vegetables, knitting was a hobby so sheep crept into my dream garden and soon I was imagining shearing them & spinning…yarn! 

In many ways the dreams have spread themselves over my life much like the protective branches of those trees. They have informed and shaped my life and what I am drawn towards.

Yarn was the first dream that came true. That happened at a tiny knitting shop in the same nameless city, near a garden with a pond that I loved to walk around. The knitting shop had a sign outside the door that they would be offering spinning classes with a drop spindle. 

My memories of that day are tied to a barber-pole red and white yarn forming in my hands. Lumpy and bumpy, but actual usable yarn! The next that took shape was of wool in a rich cream and then one of greys. These natural shades of wool and the smell of lanolin and the feel of the fibers twining together to become a yarn that could become whatever I wanted it to melded themselves into my mind, my heart and my soul. I fell in love with spinning and I bought a spinning wheel from that little shop.

The wheel was carried through my life for years and years. It was stiff and awkward for me to use. It took years and a group of spinning ladies, one of whom showed me how to treadle with two feet, before I could make yarn on that wheel. But eventually I did!

A few years before, I had been an exchange student to Norway, and the mother of a friend was a weaver. Her bright golden Glimåkra loom hovered on the edges of my mind and eventually weaving too became a part of my life along with two Glimåkra looms and a few more smaller looms.

Once the making of fabric took hold, it was not long before the desire to sew took hold and then the desire to sew and knit my own clothes… which brings us to the present day.

Yarn Dreams have a way of growing & branching out, becoming more than their beginnings. And my hope with this blog is to record some of the making & creative efforts that have their roots in my woolly fibery dream of making yarn.