Happy Wool Year — Becoming See

Boredom. Drudgery. Laziness. I have never been so glad for the holidays to be over, a sentiment shared by my class.

We spent our long--too long--winter break collectively failing to live up to our own high standards for engagement with our course material. Conversations on our first day back included bits about our daily eggnog lattes, our woefully unhealthy sleeping schedules, and our total lack of anything resembling physical activity. Relaxing? Restorative? You'll have to go somewhere else for that...like back to the woods.

We had homework, of course. Here, take this giant bag of freshly shorn wool, still encrusted with bits of poop, dirt, and hay, and turn it into fluffy white stuff using wool carders (stiff metal wire brushes) that haven't had a good day since the mid '90's.

On day one, I got through about three handfuls of the stuff before I was googling if it could be washed in the washing machine. It can be, as it happens. It took four days for my wool to dry. Over the course of the break, I probably spent about thirty hours watching Netflix while carding wool. I wanted to throw my TV out the window by day 8. On day 11, I was looking up the cost of hand-cranked drum carders (north of $650). On day 12, I was calling our local yarn store to see if they rented drum carders (no response to my voice mail). On day 13, I was googling ways to make cheap drum carders (a project for this summer, I think). On day 19...I finally finished. All hail my box of fluffy white wool. Bow down before it, for it shall conquer your soul. I haven't even made anything with it yet, and I'm torn between excitement at the prospect of felting my own hat and the desire to burn the whole box out of spite. Take that, example of menial labor that is entirely too small for the amount of time you took!

I am frustrated with my own attitude towards this task. I love the fiber arts. I've even spent considerable time making my own wool clothing and teaching myself to crochet. I've brought sewing projects along on our camping trip car rides and worked on them in the dark in the light of the fire. I've used a drop spindle and want to learn how to use a spinning wheel. Someday, I hope to go from raw wool all the way to finished product, performing every step of processing along the way. I should enjoy the carding process, right? It is a part of the arc of learning more about hand-making my own clothing items. And I'm constantly asking Grey what people did before the invention of this or that technology--hand-cranked drum carders were not around in indigenous societies, even ones with robust weaving traditions.

In those indigenous societies with strong fiber art traditions, though, the craft was practiced in community. Even the dreary task of cleaning wool was not a solitary activity performed while gorging on mindless entertainment (Netflix is like the visual version of fast food). It was social--think knitting circles or quilting clubs, a chance for (usually) women to gather and converse with other women. It was educational, an opportunity for relatives to pass on their skills to the younger generations. It was entertainment and art, both practical and personal--not a task to be dreaded, but a task to enjoy and to look forward to for the other opportunities it brought to individual, family, or tribe.

Fortunately, the fiber crafts are an area that's experiencing something of a renaissance. I am not the only millennial I know who has learned to crotchet or knit from Youtube after the skill skipped a generation. My local yarn store even rents out spinning wheels a month at a time, along with featuring a crotchet club and different classes. It's time for me to step outside the Trackers community for a bit. Get thee to Black Sheep, Laura! Enough complaining.