Thursday, July 05, 2012

Inch by Inch

Sometimes progress is slow, measured in inches not yards or miles:
blue spinning

These are the projects that seem to never end, but in retrospect, sometimes they are the most enjoyable: inches come and go, yards add up, and...progress:
blue plying

Once the whole thing is done, the memory of all those inches fades away, and it just is.
blue knitting2

This work takes a person who can zone out, focus on other things, while hands continue to move in practiced patterns, a person accustomed to slow accumulation...this process, the spinning, the colors changing, the knitting, is so enjoyable. I think I could go on and on with this one forever.

A little bit, done over and over, eventually becomes a lot.

2 Comments:

Blogger Lynn said...

I was realizing tonight that a lot of what I do for enjoyment is mindless and repetitive: carding fiber, spinning yarn, plying yarn, knittingknittingknitting, winding warps, threading heddles, sleying the reed, adding one pick after another. And then there's gardening - water, weed, mow, water, weed, mow, repeat till it snows. Most of the time this is fine, until I run into time constraints or feel like I've been winding 16/2 cotton forever and ever and EVER without real progress, but mostly I like it. And if I were practiced at thinking hard, rather than mindless repetition, I suppose I could tell you why I like it. Resting my brain, perhaps?

6:09 PM  
Blogger Valerie said...

Love your thoughts and Lynn's response.

Gotta get me one of them Golding Spindles......sigh

4:37 AM  

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