My "dream" double treadle spinning wheel.
I
loved the idea of quietly spinning yarn all day. It made me think
about the slower pace of a life many years ago. It was idyllic in my
mind. But, since I don't live in that time period, or have the large
family to help with all the other chores of everyday life, and that my
son is homeschooled, and am often interrupted by the phone, the doorbell
or the dog barking, and and.... My dream was in actuality more about
that slower pace of a simpler life than it was about spinning yarn.
Purchasing a spinning wheel really only added to my already frenzied
full life. Instead of simplifying I was really cluttering my life with
yet another thing to get done.
These associations we have around objects I think are the problem. Like for instance, how I thought purchasing an ice cream making machine was going to make me happy and my family closer. It sounds truly odd as I write that sentence, but looking back that was really what I thought. I saw a vision of my family picking raspberries together in our backyard, bringing them in and gathering around the machine as it slowly churned our fresh ingredients into ice cream. But, this is not what happened. In reality no one wanted to help me, the neighbor boy ate most of our raspberries so I used frozen cherries instead and when I was finished nobody cared much for the end product. I was trying to force a family moment in an area only I was interested in. I didn't consult my husband or son before purchasing an ice cream machine. I jumped in because I associated making ice cream with hearth and home - probably due to reading too many homesteading blogs. Our time would have been better spent playing a card game, having a tickling battle or watching a movie together as they are things we all like to do. Also, none of those things need some specialty kitchen gadget that has only one purpose.
Since
I was a little girl I wanted a spinning wheel with which to spin my own
yarn. I finally got one a few years back. A beautiful Ashford
Traditional with a walnut colored finish. Promptly, I signed up for
beginning spinning classes with a friend at our local fiber guild and
began my foray into making yarn. It was fun, very time consuming work.
My single treadle wheel was lovely to behold, but it wasn't easy to use
and I kept getting out of rhythm and breaking my yarn. This got me to
dreaming of getting a more modern double treadle spinning wheel where
both feet work making it easier to keep in time. I stalked Craig's List
and my local fiber guild for a used version of the model I thought
would be just perfect. Finally, one turned up at a price I could afford
and I quickly snatched it up, brought it home and got to work. It was
everything I had hoped it would be and yet spinning yarn was still time
consuming work. Making a skein of yarn took days. One day to spin each
ply (I would make 2 or 3), another day to ply the plies together,
another to wind and wash the yarn, and days to wait for it to dry.
Whew! A lot of time and effort. As lovely as my skeins of yarn were I
sadly found I didn't really like knitting with them. True, I could
spend more time at my new craft of spinning, (I had only been at it for
three years) honing my skills to produce yarn I did like knitting, but I
found it was not how I wanted to spend my free time. This realization made
me feel really, really guilty having spent so much effort and money on
this hobby and it also left me a bit confused. Why was this not working
out as I had planned? I believe it is because my dream was so much
more about an idea than the actual object of a spinning wheel.
These associations we have around objects I think are the problem. Like for instance, how I thought purchasing an ice cream making machine was going to make me happy and my family closer. It sounds truly odd as I write that sentence, but looking back that was really what I thought. I saw a vision of my family picking raspberries together in our backyard, bringing them in and gathering around the machine as it slowly churned our fresh ingredients into ice cream. But, this is not what happened. In reality no one wanted to help me, the neighbor boy ate most of our raspberries so I used frozen cherries instead and when I was finished nobody cared much for the end product. I was trying to force a family moment in an area only I was interested in. I didn't consult my husband or son before purchasing an ice cream machine. I jumped in because I associated making ice cream with hearth and home - probably due to reading too many homesteading blogs. Our time would have been better spent playing a card game, having a tickling battle or watching a movie together as they are things we all like to do. Also, none of those things need some specialty kitchen gadget that has only one purpose.
What I'm trying to say is that often we buy something we've always wanted only to be let down in the end. Our culture tells us in so many ways that buying stuff will make you happy, but the reality is only you can make you happy. What I've found is that I the more stuff I get rid of the clearer the vision of what I do want emerges. The "what I want" that has emerged for me is that I want a close family that spends their time together leading a simple slower paced life. Thus, I'm getting rid of all this extra stuff that I've always wanted and oddly, that purging is going to make me much happier than the stuff ever did.