spinning
and weaving
and looms
and friends
and solitude
and vaccinations
and sunshine
and rain
and baby plants
and one syllable four letter nouns...
the thing that delights me
more than I can say,
is noticing--
every single day
summer and winter.
in the summer I occasionally wear
those handwoven linen
and linsey-woolsey shirts.
But still--
(and somewhat to my amazement),
I've made more than enough
next-to-the-skin-soft
wool shirts
to see me through.
about why it was possible,
one of my great daily pleases
these last months
has been dressing up for my loom every day.
And I think the loom appreciated my effort.
But I had forgotten--
until tidying up a stack of
"magazines with articles I wrote"--
having enough such garments
was a deliberate plan--
my mid-life self
committing
to the sartorial comfort, pleasure
and general well-being
of me,
now,
at 60.
for the serendipitous Magic Medium--
for the blissfully approachable Somewhat Slanted
(of which I now have five)--
for The Cloisters (pictured above)--
for Kestrals Alight back in 1996--
for all the unnamed others
(many of which I've given away)--
(and the sheep that grew them)--
and for uncountable days and weeks and years
of pleasure--
past, present and future.
which though they are not shirts
and were completely unplanned,
I nonetheless wear so often
that I'm now having to patch them.
That the midst of one of the weirdest
and most unsettled
and oddly fascinating times of my life so far--
that even as I am taking a break from knitting
to rest and reset--
it is yarn, once again,
that is seeing me through.