Everything is in the middle part of its story. It was something, it currently is something, and one day it will be something else.
There was a moment in my late 20s when I looked around me and realized that someone was responsible for almost everything around me that wasn’t part of nature. I looked at the walls around me and realized just because I didn’t then know what drywall was made out of or how to make it, doesn’t mean I couldn’t figure it out.
I have figured it out on a lot of skills in my life: spinning, Photoshop, some general adulting tasks, and more. And this is something that – given a good enough reason – I could figure out too. And if I understood what it was made of, I could relate it to other things made of similar components. This got me to staring at cloth. When I stared at cloth I saw thread, woven or knit. I saw the core element that meant something else was within it or could become of it.
When you work with scrap yarn, part of it may still be a hat, or sweater. Perhaps something made by someone’s grandmother to give them a hug when they are far away. It’s still out there. Still being. Even as this scrap sits with you. A little fiber connecting you to a stranger.
It’s wild to me that wool, shorn from a single sheep and bearing its DNA, will sit in many different places on the globe all at once. That little bit of genetic code linking projects of many people and places that are now distant to one another.
A lot of my scrap yarn is gifted or thrifted. Little bits and bobs that the previous owner didn’t want or need.
A great gift to me is something you can’t imagine a use for. Let me imagine. A better gift to me is you telling me your imaginings of what you could do with it. Let me help you also become a trash necromancer.
I don’t know the person wearing the socks their grandmother knitted. But my yarn does. And I know my yarn.
It feels as if I am holding someone else’s memories when I work with scrap yarn. And I love memories. I collect them, you know.
Following curiosities:
- Spinning post
- Photoshop post
- Sheep Breeds
- Imagining a use for something that is waste
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