Enoughness

Dear Reader,

A couple of summers ago, I went to Santa Fe with a good friend. On the way home, we stopped at the Mora Valley Mill and I bought two pounds of roving. (Roving is a type of fiber preparation.) I decided on two pounds because it seemed like enough to make something with. When I started spinning the fiber, I didn’t have a specific idea of what to make with it. Actually, I’m still not sure. After a while, I decided that I would make it part of my morning routine to spin a length of the roving. At first the quality of my spinning was pretty rough—lots of thick and thin spots, and some spots that were over-twisted. I tried a few different approaches just for fun. Somewhere along the way, it got easier, and more consistent. I noticed when I skeined the wool that it looked and felt more even, and I liked the way it looked. I’m not sure exactly what happened or how. I suspect that my eyes and my hands were learning along the way. They got smarter. I held my hands a little farther apart, and somehow that meant the fiber drafted out more smoothly, instead of in fits and spurts. I didn’t think about it; I just started doing it that way, and then noticed that I’d changed something.

I’ve been a spinner for a very long time, but I don’t think I’ve ever spun two pounds of the same batch of fiber. There’s something to be said for working with the same materials on a regular basis over a length of time. For me, it was especially nice that I didn’t have anything particular in mind. The fiber wasn’t so precious that it had to be perfect or special. It could just be whatever it turned out to be. Early on, I knit a little sample and I liked the softness of the yarn. That was encouraging—this might be a nice yarn. And it was delightful to just play with it. Sometimes mindlessly, sometimes paying particular attention to exactly how I was handling it.

And now, it’s all spun. The next step will be to ply it into a two- or three-ply yarn. Maybe I’ll do a few little sample skeins to see which I prefer.

I’ve been making a lot of stuff lately. And it’s been fun. It’s been especially fun to recognize how much I’ve learned about working with various fiber techniques. I’ve been a bit of a dabbler. Spinning, weaving, felting, knitting, sewing, dyeing, embroidery… I’m probably not really a dabbler. I’ve studied many of these techniques in depth. With each technique, I wanted to learn the correct way to do it, and I’d sometimes save the good materials until I was worthy of using them. Now, it’s been really fun to acknowledge that I know enough. Enough for now. Enough to play with what I’ve got on hand. And when I don’t know enough, there’s always google and youtube and wonderful friends with great expertise.

All this is a very long way of saying that it’s fun to keep on learning, and it’s satisfying to know that I know enough for now.

You probably know enough about how you move, and yet it could be fun to learn even more. We have three more Tuesday Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement lessons in December. They’re still Free Pay As You Wish. I won’t be teaching the weekly group lessons in January, but I will be available for private sessions—in person or online. You can book an appointment or send me an "">email or text (713-213-7643), and we’ll set something up.

As we enter fully into the holiday season, I wish you grace and joy, and the experience of enoughness.