Just got Margaret Stove’s Spinning Lace video. After watching a bit of it, I realized that I have naturally developed my spinning technique just the same way she spins her lace yarn. Since lace yarn is what I aim to spin from the beginning, I am very happy that all on my own, I found the same way to spin a fine yarn. Of course, I still learned a few tricks from her on how to join fiber in and others, I am after all still a relatively new spinner. But I am quite happy that I found the right way to spin the lace yarn.
Watching her video has given me a desire to start from the very beginning and prepare the fleece to spin. I have been thinking that I don’t want to deal with the dirty fleece and doing the washing and carding myself. But the way she showed how she washes her fleece makes it seem so simple. I might just give it a try.
I am listening to Tessa Bielecki’s Wild at Heart. While spinning last night and listening to her book from Audible, the two activities seem to suit each other very nicely. The act of spinning can quiet the mind down and keep it in a rhythmic state that makes it easy to enter the contemplative prayer. So does knitting. I wonder if the contemplative nuns ever used this method for their prayer. Since I reread Henri Nouwen’s Genessee Diary, I am again drawn to the monastery life and reading about it. I don’t think I am ever going to adjust to the barren atmosphere in a monastery, I am too addicted to the constant stimulation of the technologies, but I am drawn to the contemplative practice and prayer nevertheless.
Bielecki has touched on an old question I had about christianity. She was telling stories about the saints, not the pious side of their lives but the human side. She talked about how some of them like certain food. She also talked about singing and dancing. I love to dance. It gives me great joy when I move my body to a favorite song. However, the stoic teaching of my early christian years, gave me doubts about the approprietness of dancing and for that matter drinking and any other kind of activities that give pleasure to our mind and body. I never was able to resolve that question. I gave up. But now after listening to her book, I wonder if I was too strict and narrow minded in my understanding of a christian life. The bible never said it’s bad to drink or dance, actually there are plenty of times when these things were mentioned. Jesus even turned water to wine at a wedding. All things are good in modesty. It’s the excessiveness that is the problem. What a revelation and a relief.