Storm prep. Spinning to supply the yarn

 

Left to right, the two back pieces, two pockets, front piece complete except for top shaping, next frontispiece in progress.

This has almost exhausted my supply of yarn.  In fact the last two stripes on the rightmost piece I spun yesterday and immediately knitted up.  So I need to spin seriously. This is good because we are about to have a nor'easter and snow, up to 18" of same and high winds.  This means I'll be home.  I did get my new supply of roving, so all's well there.  And there's food in the house.

Friday was an online knitting group meeting, which was very nice, except for one member whom I've met a number of times in person back in the days when our groups met that way.  She suddenly asked if I would accept spinning commissions!  As if.  I politely said, no, I really don't, which is britspeak for "in your dreams, Bunty!"  and she persisted, well, then will you teach me to spin?  And I continued with noooooo, wondering where she was brought up.  And how much she imagined it would cost to pay a person to spindle spin enough for a garment, she clearly not grasping the number of hours it entails.

But I did direct her to a couple of wonderful teachers on YouTube, Abby Franquemont and Spinning Sarah.  She made no notes about it.  But said maybe she could get her friend who spins to come and do a spinning retreat with her.  To which I said, that sounds lovely, feeling very sorry for the friend who is about to be imposed on. And seeing that here again is a person who thinks it's too hard to actually learn stuff, would rather someone inserted it into her abilities.

Why was this so ill-timed, you ask, puzzled.  Well, for one thing, a knitting group where people come to work and chat, is not a business opportunity.  For another, it's rude to even ask about commissions in that context, much less about teaching. That's not why I'm there.  And considering my age, even less appropriate, given that I am at the stage in life where my remaining energy and creative juices are better used in my own work. 

I've never accepted commissions. Not that kind of artist.  I used to explain that I didn't get into art in order to take orders from other people.  I work on what I need to until I don't need to any more, then I move to the next art form I need to work in.  It's inner directed, about making a life not a living.  No disrespect, in fact, great respect, to people who do make a living by making, but it's not my path. And a lot of people have bought my work, nice, but not essential.

I've always supported my art with a day job. I like to remind people that Borodin had a fulltime job in a chemistry lab.  Philip Glass was still installing appliances well after he was famous for his compositions. Leonard and Virginia Woolf had to run the Hogarth Press to support themselves. I'm not putting myself in their class, but in their frame of mind. 

I don't expect someone who only knows me slightly to grasp all this, but having been gently dissuaded and still persisting, that's a bit over and above.  So after I simmered down a bit, I decided it was a Father, forgive them, kind of moment. 

Pro tip: please don't assume other people are there to serve you, when they're in a group that's strictly about playing.  End of pro tip.

Back to spinning and getting this lovely jacket going again. It amuses me that, having spent years in my first serious art pursuits working in grayscale, largely black on white or white on black monotypes, which constituted a couple of my first exhibits, and all of my early invitations to gallery shows, with little interest in color, I'm in a different mode now.  I used to be much more interested in shapes and relationships, accepting that color has meaning but not wanting to pursue it. Now it appears to have invaded my life, too funny.  Ignore us, would you?  Take that, missy!