i'm still not buying readymade yarns from primary markets.
but, what do you know -- no DTs, no night sweats.
a friend bought me some spinning fiber when she was at MDS&W. this is the single i did on my drop spindle walking to and from pilates class. the fiber is wool with some hand-dyed rayon and some silk noil -- and it is very soft and very lustrous.
this yarn showed up quite unexpectedly from a friend for whom i had done some tarot readings. (yes, i'll trade tarot for yarn, fiber, or sometimes even nothing at all ). it is a wool and hemp blend, and is very perfumey.
both of these together ARE going to work to make a new little something i've been planning. i cringe to think that both of my pals here will perhaps say "i cannot believe THAT is what you chose to do with that fiber/yarn..." but i've got a plan. i've been doing research.
the shabby gluttony still gets to me. i like yarn, i really like yarn. but i remember being in a yarn store in the last few years -- it was not my store -- and commenting to another shopper that i do not keep a lot of stash.
(why do people in yarn stores persist in believing that because they are all there, they must have enough in common with everyone else to have a civil conversation? why did i think it?) the woman in question, this shopper, was someone who thought her stash was a real virtue. "but i just love looking at it," she said.
but we were both "looking at it", and neither of us had purchased it yet. we were in the yarn store, looking at yarn. and yet for her, looking at it meant owning it.
plenty of artists have been too poor to purchase their own tools and media. de kooning worked in black and white kitchen enamel paints when he couldn't afford pigment. i can't help but think of renoir or picasso too poor to buy proper paints and canvases while doughy, triple-chinned dilettantes filled their little baskets with the very best money could buy -- so they could take it to their homes and salons and look at it and get inspired.
it's that "my candor makes all my ugliness and avarice seem amusing and refreshing!" ploy. gotcha.
there are more reasons than just lack of funds to not buy yarns. i think it has really juiced up my creativity, and you little poppets will just have to gauge your agreement over the course of the months while the projects i have in my mind and on the needles unfold.
i certainly didn't expect that i would stop buying yarns and just be given yarns or fiber, and while i am touched, i am also prepared to be neglected from hereon in. my eye is on a drum carder. but these new yarns mean more to me than just turning over my charge card, and i will not forget where they came from.