Numinous

January 4, 2017 by curvylou 6 Comments

I’ve been mulling an idea, sorting out in my head what kinds of materials I’d need for weft… and then I went into my stash—and FOUND them.

I know it sounds simple, but it’s weirdly revolutionary for me.

Over the years, I’ve kept so many little bits and pieces, because they hold some kind of numinous magic for me.

Tiny scraps of fabric trimmings. Selvages. Threads pulled off bobbins. Bits of fluff that fell to the floor during spinning. Warp ends. Lengths of practice and sample handspun. Puny balls of unspun wool. Random lengths of colored yarns.

And yesterday, when I knew I needed some of this, and some of that, I wondered if, like my earlier weaving, I’d find what I needed in my stash. So I rifled it, and found these particular treasures:

Hand-dyed silk fabric scraps and unspun yak/wool roving from a class at Madrona two years ago.
Warp ends from a hand-spun, hand-woven cashmere/merino scarf I made for Matt’s dad Edward.
Metallic thread from the San Pablo Flea Market.
Orange sparkle from that time at the Black Sheep Festival when I bought my first drum carder.
Trimmings from my first quilt.
Remnants of coffee-dyed Cormo yarn
Remnants of handspun, hand-dyed Cormo wool that I used to knit a dying friend the softest, cheerfullest warm cowl.
Handspun, hand-dyed bronze yak/silk samples.
My first handpun silks.
The first yarn I ever bought off Etsy, before I could spin my own.
Handspun silk samples from a plying class with Sarah Anderson.

Just reading that list plunges me into a deep, pleasurable state; gratitude for those experiences, acknowledgment of how happy or meaningful they were to me, how foundational.

So it’s not just stash diving, is it? It’s diving into my own life, into my own past, and using the materials of that past to create something new, here, now.

It feels deeply pleasurable; powerful; meaningful; magical.