Spinning, Out of Control
One drawback of having written two books in one year is that I put myself on a Spinning Diet.
Spinning, for me, is the place where no rules apply. It's the opposite of knitting: There are no deadlines, EVER, no writing down or trying to reproduce anything, no undoing of mistakes is allowed, and no time limits are imposed. I embrace my mediocrity and "long-term beginner" status completely. The yarn the wheel (or spindle) gives me is the yarn I love, and that's all there is to it. I'm the Unintentional Spinner. So I decided that as long as I was on a knitting deadline, there was not going to be any time for spinning in the way I like to do it: Down the rabbit hole for hours and days; spin, ply, skein, wash, dry, pet, pet, pet. Takes a lot of time. And before I knew it, more than a year went by without my touching the wheel.
Which simply will not do. What a colossal wrong to have done myself! Spinning Diet, indeed. Spinning feeds knitting, which everybody knows. Communing with fleece as it becomes yarn is spiritual knitting nourishment at its finest. I have starved my inner spinner nearly to death with some ill-conceived notion of time management.
This weekend, I binged. I made 643 yards if 3-ply Cormo yarn. And by "weekend" I mean a good part of Saturday, lots of Sunday, most of Monday and all of Tuesday. Spinning Out of Control. I have no memory of eating or sleeping or cooking or doing laundry for four days. I can tell those things have been happening, because nobody else around here has noticed a failure to function in me. But 643 yards of 3-ply Cormo do not result from some passing whim to spin for a bit. They come from hardcore obsessive megafocus on spinning.
I don't know whether to be proud of myself for making so much dreamy string, or ashamed for being so self-indulgent.
Either way, it's time to get back on track, because I have to start a new book.
And the 3 of these bags of beautiful gorgeous pin-drafted fiber that I still have to spin are pretty much torturing me. They call to me from the corner by the wheel with the voices of Sirens. No matter where I go in the house, I can hear the song:
"Spin more, spin more spin more, it is not day!
It is the Nightingale and not the Lark;
Whose song beguiles you Leave the Wheel and work.
The laundry and the dishes don't love you;
As we do, who are made of fluffy wool!"
Every binge must reach its inevitable end. The only question is what sort of end will it be? A purposeful, self-controlled roll to a stop, or a squealing, twisted collision with reality? If I don't stop spinning today, I could find myself in an intervention! My family could tell me all the ways my compulsion to make string has injured them. They might say they love me and that's why I have to go to a Special Place of Healing.
Or else they will continue not to notice I'm wearing the same clothes from days ago, and there is fiber sticking out of my hair. As long as they get picked up from practice and the groceries keep hitting their plates, at least.
As ever, it's gonna be up to me to decide to control myself. Or not.
