Spinning Mojo

Back in September, I cleaned up and organized my spinning area (this is in my living room) which looked like this:

and then looked like this:

But I haven’t made the time to sit and spin ever since.  I’m not sure why - perhaps it’s because I am no longer happy with just spinning to spin. I think I want to think a bit more about spinning to have yarn to use, though I doubt I’ll ever be a project spinner. 

I admire the work of project spinners, the efficiency with which they go about planning a project, and spin to an exactitude which will never be mine, spin lots and lots of the same yarn, then spend another zillion hours with that yarn on the needles, or maybe quite a bit less than a zillion with that yarn on a loom. 

I’m not sure if I could spend that much time and intimacy with the same yarn and then go around wearing it.  In any case, I’ll never know because I won’t be doing A Project.

What I do want to do is have yarn for Saori weaving and, okay,  a tiny Project. But I must get back my spinning mojo.

I can’t think of a better way to get my spinning mojo back than to get a little ceremonial and observe St. Distaff's Day, also called Rock Day.  Go here for a nice historical explanation.

The short version is that Rock Day is the day after Epiphany & the Twelfth Night of Christmas and traditionally it's the day for spinners to get back to work.  Nowadays, spinning & weaving guilds plan Rock Day spinning events to honor that tradition.

Our guild did not plan anything, but I hope we will next year. I totally forgot about this day until I read Jill's blog post about sewing her group's Saori banner, which included mention of St. Distaff's Day and also a very sweet story about her sewing machine.

My plans: spin on my drop spindle, maybe downtown at RiverWools. And also, to crack open Jacey Boggs' new book, Spin Art.

So, do spin tomorrow if you can and take a moment to think about  a time when spinning was work that put clothes on your loved ones' backs or maybe some bread on the table.

Turn, turn, turn.