# Bitter sweet Fiber Story



## romysbaskets (Aug 29, 2009)

The interlacing of our lives with our spinning is the cloth that others will remember...and our dear friend Megan will always be remembered by so many. She loved the color orange, walking in salt waters, seeing the natural beauty of the world and sunsets. Woodpeckers were very special to her and inside of Megan was a fiber artist unable to display her visions through her hands. This story came to mind which I will post below...It is blunt, painful and very hard hitting but there is value here that resonates. 

I know that this will touch many here. I wanted to share. This was written by the lady who experienced it. She describes her life as it pertains to loss as well as love of fiber.

Written by Mira and also posted on her blog.

"As a weaver, a spinner, a fiber freak (câmon, admit it...you know the Baltimore Showâs this weekend & youâre goin there to buy this yearâs show fleeces) sometimes you find yourself at a crossroads of life. Weâve all been there....itâs the old âfish or cut baitâ conundrum that we joke about....spin that new roving or wash that old fleece to get it started processing, plan your next weaving or oohhhh, look, thereâs a new catalog in the mail to pour over for 2-3 hours
Things that we, as weavers, as spinners, do, arenât on the ads on tv, the side bars on the internet, but what we do is part of every-day life, everything people must do every day, that being get dressed
History, at times, has not been kind to weavers, has upended what spinners do (and sometimes, put both out of their previous jobs). Over a century ago, mohair was the fiber of choice, cashmere a golden fleece for those who could afford, linen the working-class fiber, and cotton the standby due to its ease
But as with any weaver, any spinner, time creeps up on you, and you look around at your studio, your loom, your wheel, and you wonder âwhere am I going with thisâ, because life just threw you something so...unexpected that youâre not certain what to do with it
Youâve woven for the last two days, and looking back, fudgebats, thereâs a broken thread thatâs affected the weave you didnât notice in your haste to finish with a deadline. Thereâs not enough of that fleece after processing to finish the project you promised to knit the sweater for. The wheel sudden develops a creak that, as youâre treadling, the wood develops a crack that splits your hopes (literally) on finishing on time. There arenât enough heddles for that project on the loom and itâs after hours for your favorite store. The list is endless, but we adapt, we have to, weâre the base of all that people wear every day
But, sometimes, there are things that simply cut off all that creativity, and just make you step back and try to get your focus back, but itâs just too much
Two years ago, the phone call came...the big phone call that none of us ever want to get...a relative, a close relative, with the Big C....cancer. It was a devastating time, as in your 40's, no one wants to have to focus on that, and certainly no one wishes it on anyone, not even in your darkest desires of curses in your deepest depths of anger. But, statistically, colon cancer is 100% cure-able these days
So, as with starting the prize merino fleece that was an early gift, you have the main player, the fleece, the person enduring this hardship, and you take it out and set it out, and you have options. Do you skirt the fleece first, do you wash it fully and see how it comes, do you piece it out to do hand-washing to display the different textures and colors of the fleece? All the while, in the back of your head, seeing an end product, and hoping that reality and hope come together in a harmony that pleases.
Phone calls, hopeful cards, physical airline trips across a continent...the world continues to exist, despite the suffering of one individual, which is sobering all the same. As a couch-student of geology, volcanology, & the related sciences, geologic time is nothing to one personâs moment on this planet, and yet, it is each of us who defines how this world will continue. One person can mean so much, even to a small group of people
The fleece is washed, and it looks good, little vegetable matter, just a few mats in the usual spots at the bottom of the fleece near the âelbowsâ, easily discarded outside for the birds to line their nests with next spring. The world outside the windows had settled into winter, and a welcome snow to coat the lands, making them sleep, healing, recovering, a time of recovery
The Big C has been pushed back, and the future, as with the fleece, is promising. There is a good future here, a beautiful fleece, the colors, the vibrancy, and there is a future for it, a good, solid one, with an ending, a good ending, a promise of completion, and something more beautiful that the fleece was hoped for. There is a double-ending of hope here, and good promise for recovery for what might have been a bad fleece, and a recovery of a human being
Spring, and the birds have found those clumps of discarded fleece, and the world has recovered, and the Big C is gone, and the fleece is ready to be carded. A friend has offered to card it on their equipment in trade for two other prize fleeces, and there is a sense of renewal in the family, of triumph, of completion. Names of physicians who have played so prominently in our lives will be memories, not commonplace any longer, recitals of medical terminology will be things to give tolerant smiles to when brought up accidentally by well-meaning friends. There is hope, a greater hope than there was the previous spring, when neither the fleece nor the Big C was a thought
Summer comes, and the fleece is away, and relatives are going out on boats, enjoying time with friends, and a âfamily vacationâ in early fall comes to play, and itâs time to reflect on what might have been. Recovery is a slow thing, even for someone whose whole physical mind-set and appearance are those of someone 30 years younger than they seem...recovery when one is in their 70's, however, is touchy, and comes with time...time that ravager of humanity, that cares nothing for those whom it holds within its grasp
September brings another delay to the fleeceâs processing, the family trip, and some questions to the recovery, strange pains, ailments, but this is the recovery from the Big C, which will not be overnight, nor instantaneous. But the trip was necessary, or was a swan song?
October 4th, and the call comes, almost a year to the day...two calls in the same day on the same phone machine, Fate with a malicious sense of urgency and dispassion. The fleece is delayed again because it was processed wrong by a well-meaning, but very new, member of the company, who wanted to show their mettle, but ultimately, over-carded the fleece through the machinery and felted it...the prize, seal-bay merino fleece, washed with care by hand, seeped with love and lanolin...is gone
As is the hope for the vanquishment of the Big C....Big C has returned, if it ever left, and has settled in the liver, lungs, trachea, behind one eye, the colon and more intestine need to go, the bladderâs tube has been crushed...how much can a human body withstand before the inevitable is kinder than the cure
Being the child of doctors, nurses, physicians in general, questions asked have brought no answers over the last year, and being the child whose family members did get taken by the Big C, questions went without answers, because perhaps the right questions werenât being answered. The Big C is back, and this time, there is no âyour life will be shortened, but how much, we donât knowâ...no...the chalkboard of life is silent this time, because there is only time now, a very short, very cruel amount of it
What do you do when the person whoâs tormented you for the last twenty-five years is the one now who needs the compassion, who took you on trips and, there in front of people, took your desserts and said âyou donât need it, youâre too fat anywayâ? What do you say to the person lying beside you each nite, who wants desperately to know that their mother will live another twenty, thirty years, when you know, deep down, whatâs coming, and how soon, and how do you convey that kindly in some means? How to you try to not let the stress eat at you at work, when your performance is noted, and you try to put on a face, but thereâs nothing left at the well but numbness
A life is being shortened, and extinguished soon, and a fleece, a beautiful gift of breeding and choice and expense, is gone. The mill offers to return whatâs left...blanket filler perhaps? A pet rug? A sign, perhaps, that this choice piece of shaven hair was the sun and I flew too high with my intentions for it, my hopes, at last, to make something for me, and finally, not something for someone else, at long last
More cards, more phone calls...a sealed box comes to the door in mid-November, with the felted fleece, two cards of personal apology from my friend and his wife for whatâs happened, and certificates for free carding, shipping, processing, as well as samples of fleeces from people who raise sheep near them, and they want to make amends. A noble thing, and they are trying to make amends, but how does one open a box of felted fleece, when thereâs a FedEx driver coming up the drive with yet another legal paper for the will that has to be signed and amended in time. Will it make it back in time is the question
An eye goes, part of the liver, the bladder splint is put in, but November brings the Big C to its worst, in the brain, and now itâs just a matter of weeks, days perhaps. What was once a noble, healthy human being is being turned into a subservient, dependant thing, the lowest form of life to this person, the greatest defeat....to have to depend on others for everything...walking, sitting, moving, sleeping
More sleepless nights, and the cats have a new cozy to sleep on, and have embedded it with so much fur that it resembles some crazed nightmare on the floor, something a comedy show would invent. More phone calls, more bad news
One last holidaze together....family only, not married relations...as if there wasnât enough strain on the family to begin with, but there is a finality to it all, gathering son, daughter and husband together, one last time, to be with a mother, a mother who barely recognizes her children, has strong words for them all, for her husband, for life itself. Who can blame her now, the woman who could have run marathons, was in better physical shape than her daughter-in-law, by decades, and yet...in the end, her fragility, her running from death, as she has her whole life, did not save her
January 5th, the Big C won...again
There is a tragedy to this story, not one of my more pleasant tales here, but something that needed to be told, at least, for my necessity of need. Another life on the planet is gone, and I have a screensaver that I found several years ago....a photo of someoneâs tombstone that states âit isnât the date on either end that counts, but how they used that dash, for that dash between the dates represents all the time they spent alive on earth, and now, only those that loved them know what that little line is worthâ
I look at the $300 bill for the fleece that I found, that early gift from a loving husband, well-intended, and I look at the photos of Big Câs first appearance, the cards, the âwe will triumph over thisâ spirit. I look to the floor, to the matted, felted cat bed, and to the latest box of photos that my husband will convert to CDâs for the celebration of life comint this June for a lost soul
Sometimes....even when we can fix mistakes, some times, the mistakes hurt us more than we imagined...and as Iâm finally back home after nearly 4 months, I find the wheel, what could have been on there now, and take out the silk-angora-damson blend, and wonder what itâs going to turn out to be, with its blues and white and burgundy-magentas, the navy and midnites, the blushed grays...and I wonder, what my mother-in-law would have knit with it...because she was a knitter, and I was a spinner...and through our years, it was our only common hobby, the only one
I wonder if my niece, her granddaughter who knits, would like the finished yarn...and itâs Saturday...thereâs still another day to the Baltimore show...I wonder if I can get there in time to find another fleece
Life continues...but thereâs that dash, thereâs always that dash, and little things to remind us that weavers, spinners, and fiber freaks...we are human, despite our being able to mend just about anything, if found early enough...but we canât mend everything, despite our hopes for being able."


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