There is a tension between having the time for fibre preparation, spinning and getting to the finished cloth that has been weighing on my mind. How I determine where to spend my time is important in my output – what I spend my time on in my making determines what is finished and whether it happens in a relatively timely manner.
I think about it in terms of a cruise ship in the terminal. That cruise ship takes certain number of resources to fill and keep at sea but it must come into port to continue on its journey. The resources that the cruise ship takes means there are fewer to go towards to sailboats, also in port. The personel and material resources are allocated to the cruise ship because it’s a beast compared to the needs of a small sailboat, even two or three.
This has been an analogy I’ve used throughout my own life when deciding how to allocate my own resources to my family – namely my kids. This same idea has become increasingly important when thinking about cloth. Fibre preparation, for example, takes a fair amount of time-intensive work. The process of picking and carding is slow. It just is. While I don’t love it, I certainly don’t hate it. Prep is a lovely way to spend the afternoon – especially if I can be outside and the mess (namely, the dirt from picking and carding) stays out there as well.
The time I allocated to fibre preparation then takes away from the spinning, which has always and will always be the main bottleneck of creating cloth. Spinning can be quite monotonous for me now. I am able to spin the yarn I need and want for the cloth I am seeking with little to no forethought or planning; therefore, the process begins to feel very repetitive and time-consuming. It is much more fun, and often more satisfying, to discuss yarn and technique with others, rather than spending that time actually doing the spinning itself. This is a difficult tension to hold.
Finally, warping and dressing the loom is incredibly time consuming. The finer the cloth, the higher number of threads, which takes time to thread and sley. The actual weaving itself is relatively quick compared to the time needed for the previous work to make said cloth.
As I look at the various steps and the decision making that comes with each, I am not surprised that the resources to ‘make cloth’ – which is really only one step of the journey – is intensive. It is also not a wonder that at various times in my life, I don’t have the resources to spend making said decisions. This is the tension that I live with at the moment.
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