Before I started spinning a couple of years ago, when I was “just” a knitter and crocheter, I had a different approach to a project. Normally, I would find a pattern for what I wanted to make, and then I would chose the yarn that I wanted to use. Notice that I said “I wanted” a couple of times there.

I cannot even begin to count how many times I wasn’t happy with the finished results of the projects, if I managed to get that far along. Most of the time, I would end up frogging the entire disaster and using the yarn for something else.

Over the last couple of years, something “odd” has been happening here. I think it started when I began doing my “disaster” style dyeing. I stopped trying to completely control what was going to happen. I could plan, or have an idea in my mind of what I would like, but I found “just letting it become what it wants” worked much better and to my advantage.

Rovings and yarn were dyed. And looking at them once they were dried didn’t always excite me the way that I had hoped they would. Often times, I would look at it and think, “Okay. Well, that’s different.” End results of a particular stage of the process were neither good or bad, they were just what they were. What I didn’t realize is that there was magic in the fiber and I needed to learn how to listen to it.

I can still select the colors, whether I dye the roving myself or purchase a dyed roving or yarn from a talented fiber artist, but I no longer decide what it will become. I hope, I consider, but I do not decide. Most importantly, I won’t even consider spinning or knitting something until the fiber has spoken.

Sometimes, it takes a matter of minutes for it to speak, other times, months or even years. I may hold it. Touch it. Caress it. Yet I dare not create something in which it does not want to be. I admire it, and I wait.

Somewhere along the way, a day when I am least expecting it, the fiber calls to me. It’s the kind of call that no one else can hear, but that just won’t leave you alone. No matter what you are working on, no matter what you have to do in life, that fiber calls and calls until you just have to go over and pick it up and begin the process of helping it become something that it wants to be. Often, it will only tell me how it wants to be spun, and plied. Then it will fall silent for a while, happy to be in it’s current incarnation.

At that point it is washed, the twist set, and gently air dried. If it still remains silent, it is gently packed away until it chooses to call to me again.

Once that day comes, it doesn’t matter what you had hoped to make from it. It doesn’t matter what plans you have laid out for it. It has a mind and determination of it’s own. The wise knitter will heed the fiber’s call to what it wants to be, the wise knitter will not delay, will not object and will grab the nearest set of needles in the right size. The wise knitter will allow the “magic” to just happen.

Even when the pattern is one that did not excite you previously, even when the pattern is riddled with errors, and even when the chart needs to be corrected, the wise knitter will persevere, respecting that the yarn must become what it wants to be, what it needs to be. With each stitch that is cast on, with each row that is worked, the magic takes hold into a tangible item that continues to grow. Slowly, softly it speaks of a dream, of a place, of a time. With each click of the needles, I listen, I dream and I allow it to just become.

It takes hold of you, mesmerizing you. Almost like an addiction of the worst kind. You cannot put it aside. You cannot bring yourself to stop. At the end of each row, you think, “Just one more row”. With each interruption, you tell those around you,” In just a minute”, or “let me just finish this one section”. There is no stopping, not for food, not for drink, and not for much needed sleep. At least not until you begin seeing cross-eyed and can no longer read the charts clearly or feel like you are about to pass out. You tell yourself you should stop long enough to take progress photos, to make a quick blog entry, to show the magic of creating, but you just cannot stop long enough to do that.

Then one morning, you find that you are about halfway through the pattern. You force yourself to stop. Force yourself to dig out the camera and take a few shots. You don’t feel quite ready to reveal the magic of what is to be, but instead share a photo of something that looks interesting enough to make others wonder and guess what it will become. You rush through writing the post, letting the writing muse take over, talking crazy non-sense (at least it would appear to be that to those who don’t hear their fiber and yarn speak to them…. and you don’t dare tell anyone who doesn’t understand about these things as they may call the the men in the funny white jackets to come and take you away… ho ho, ha ha, he he), but all the while that you are doing this, it is still calling to you. Quickly you edit the photo and upload it for others to see. Then you promise that on another day you will reveal more about the “object” and hope that they will be able to hear it tell them, “yes, this is what I wanted to be”.