Journey to the Golden Fleece- Module 2 - Road of Trials

Once upon a time there was a wonderful woman.  She was creative, open minded, free thinking, all loving, a little overly proud and selfish, and far to positive for most people to handle ("How do you see the bright side in EVERY single dark matter??" They'd say) She loved to spend as much free time as humanly possible creating and making anything.  Her favourite thing to make, was yarn.  However, she was also a mother.  And as the life of a Mother goes, most of the selfishness and pride, and creation went by the wayside. There was laundry to wash dry and fold AND put away.  There were dishes (Oh so many dishes!!) to do. There were meals to cook (more then 3 a day, which always lead to more dishes!) And then the love and tenderness and firmness and caring and book reading and playing with and all that stuff that goes along with raising children as well, got in the way.  It's funny, how she would simultaneously feel pride at her children's achievement as she watched them accomplish something from the stands, and feel a twinge of resentment, that she could possibly be creating something, possibly be grabbing her own bit of pride as well.  She could want to hug and love the child that was having a total melt down because they dropped their pizza on the floor which the dog promptly grabbed,  while at the same time want to whisk them off to their room so they could not disturb anyone else with their fit.  The conflicting emotions of Motherhood often left he overwhelmed. And when it was all just a bit to much, she'd step away and close herself in her craft room, and create something. Anything. But mostly yarn.

My Road of Trials yarn hinges on one thing that has got to be my biggest trial of all: Motherhood. It's the journey I started with, and the journey I will follow, likely through out the remainder of the modules. (Module three is the vision quest, a journey into the deeper you, and having examined what drove me to this course, and what I've discovered through the journaling about me already, Motherhood is a huge part of me, but definitly not the only part of me.)  A quick break down of the components and how they relate to this road of trials is as such:  There is a big fat purple single (of varying grist/diameter) that was auto wrapped with a teal, navy and white crochet cotton, each of varying diameter, which was then quick coiled and Shelob'd (which is a technique Wool Wench shared with us!) The purple represents the pride, how it swells and how it is always there.  The threads it is auto wrapped in represents the chaos and struggle that is often playing along side. And it's coiled up(mostly just because coiling looks super pretty ;) ) and then wrapped in the silk hanky which was purple and grey, to represent how it's all wrapped up in love.

Creatively this was a real struggle. I couldn't for the life of me 1) keep the purple single even and 2) understand that it was OK that the single wasn't even.  Spinning has become very technical for me since starting the Master Spinners course.  Instead of being bound to the rigidity of counting treadles and keeping make lengths consistent, just allowing for texture and the auto wraps to actually auto wrap (without adjusting and allowing them to do what they wanted...) was really difficult.   I am happy with this yarn, though. It's light and fluffy, and textured.

Onward to Module 3, The vision quest!

~Kara