A New Day Dawning

New Year brings with it a chance to begin again. I love mornings, Mondays, birthdays, changing seasons and New Years Day. Today has to be my favourite day of the year. It is a day of hope. There are no external expectations placed on me regarding work, decor, food, gifts or traditions. My only goal today is to rest after a late night at the annual farm barn dance. My family will be taking it easy. There will be music playing in the house. There is always music.

My day is open before me with many options and yet the freedom to do nothing.

I have missed writing. Right now I choose this.

Bananas go soft before we finish the bunch. Baking them into banana bread is a tasty, yet time consuming, option. It is faster to just unzip them and pop them in the freezer. Then on lazy mornings, like today, we whizz up a few with milk, peanut butter and a dash of honey for a breakfast smoothie. Our sad honey jar had nothing to offer. A delightful alternative was a bit of leftover vegan coconut ice-cream.

The days after Christmas and around New Year, being conducive to purging and new beginnings, have awakened my desire to clear out, clean up, and organise my thoughts, routines, home and life. Hence the banana smoothie. Frozen bananas lurking in the freezer are conquered. 

The chickens gave an offering of four eggs at sunrise. The absence of bread for toast to accompany eggs, combined with no inclination to make a trip to town or to bake bread over the past week may also have contributed to our liquid nourishment. Yesterday we decluttered six croissant out the freezer and ate them with various jams for the same reason. Sometimes the things we purge can still spark joy.

Firefoot, our living lawn mower, shadowed me into the chicken run, hoping to eat the hen's grain. Then he sniffed into the dogs' bowls in the hope of some dog pellets. When I got around to giving him his own food he stuck his hoof into the bucket and tipped it upside down. The chickens were delighted. I topped up the bucket. Every time he sees me he nickers a greeting. He follows me too, breathing softly behind my back when I stop to fill his water bucket. Yesterday he tried to taste my braid. We have a swarm of bees living in our roof. Regular attempts to evict them have failed and they aggressively defend their home against lawn mowers and sweaty people pushing said mowers. Firefoot does almost as good a job at trimming the lawn apart from the weeds which now stand out as defiant flags. He also conveniently fertilises the lawn as he mows.

This new morning, day, month, year and decade has brought a few concerns over broken vehicles, looming university fees and a pessimistic budget which have contributed to my heart skipping a beat or two recently, all the more reason to have a slow day. Lavender tea, sipped quietly in my chair was a good way to start today. I do have hope and I know God will provide, he always does.

Herbal teas, picked from the garden are a gentle therapy that I love to use along with prayer, journalling and soothing fibre crafts. I hope to spin a little today. There is a challenge for January to spin for 15 minutes a day, but I have enough real challenges without imposing artificial pressure on myself. Maybe today I will spin. Maybe I will just sort and tidy my spindles and fibre and pretty up the entrance to our home where they live in baskets. The dust bunnies have bred indiscriminately and have overpopulated in every corner.

First, I will take a nap.

Lucy's First Fleece - Part 4

Since mastering the basics of spinning, and loving every moment, I have been experimenting with the inferior bits of my precious Lucy's fleece.

By the time I reach the best wool, I will hopefully have discovered the easiest way to wash the locks without felting them; pick out the vegetable matter without leaving tiny spiky bits to be spun into the yarn; comb or card the softest fibres and spin the loveliest type of wool.

I have spun 'in the grease' where the lanolin stays in, but so does the mud. I have washed the fleece so squeaky clean that it feels chalky to the touch. I have combed the fibres into the airiest puffs of lock which I have spun individually into a shinty smooth semi worsted yarn and I have carded clouds of rolags which spin into a fluffy woollen yarn... all this on one bobbin. 

Most importantly, my skill is slowly improving as I am spinning a little more evenly each time I try. 

Decadent Dad turned  two drop spindles on the lathe for spinning on the trot. The first, most beautiful one is rather heavy and rests on the floor while I spin 'park and draft' style, but the second is a dream to spin 'on the fly'. 

The unspinnable (is that a word) fleece is fun to play with. Two delightful little girls and I have made felt balls which we dyed with food colouring and then threaded into Rainbow Lucy Necklaces.

 It was a lovely opportunity for learning the names of colours in English and Sesotho, opposites like wet/dry, dark/light, rough/smooth and counting words in both languages.

I also experimented with home made mulberry dye.

The resultant pinky felt looks like carpet-underfelt. I haven't found a use for it yet but, in true Elastic Mom style, I will. 

An internet exploration led to my discovery of the craft of needle felting which has the potential to produce magnificent works of art. I managed to create a simple little flower with my sharp felting needles and some Waldorf-dyed fleece.

Now I am ready to start with the superior sections of Lucy's fleece. Last weekend I washed half of it. I am in no hurry. A little sorting here, combing there and spinning when I can and eventually I will have enough wool to knit into something lovely. I find the whole process relaxing and after all these years I understand the nursery rhyme my mother taught me as a child:

Cross Patch draw the latch

Sit by the fire and spin

Take a cup and drink it up

Then call the neighbours in