Episode 6: The Journey is the Reward

We were filming the last scene for the short documentary that shows the making process from the beginning. And then the thought in my mind was, “I’ve never made anything more beautiful.” 

I realize now that making the film about the process has forced me to really engage with that process. I had to plan scenes and take mental pictures in my mind while my hands did something automatic so that later, when Monty, our adored friend and videographer, came, the filming could go smoothly. In this way, the shawl represents an intimacy with the process that I’ve never really felt. Each step of the making, from admiring the fiber on the back of our beloved guanaco, Alma to wearing the completed shawl on my own represents a sensory experience. One that is deeply encoded in my memory as well as in the shawl itself. 

This intimacy with process is something new for me. We don’t tend to do it very often in our fast paced world. But, I really love it. And I feel like I never want to go back to a checklist mode kind of life again. I think of it like this: A lot of life is spent on autopilot where we forget to notice what’s right in front of us. The routine becomes so automatic that before you know it we are just going through the motions, checking things off the list only to add more. And when we get so hurried, we stop making things. The raw materials that went into our meals or our clothes are far away and forgotten. But when we start making things with our own hands, we start to engage in a process. If we use materials that are in a raw state, as close to the original starting point as we can get, we have the privilege of witnessing a profound change. Our senses get to experience materials getting transformed into something useful or delicious or beautiful. And while using our hands to transform the materials, we are actually transforming the way we live. Which means that at the end of the day, when we put our heads on a pillow to sleep, rather than being irritated at the thought of having to face yet another list in the morning, we are more likely to feel a sense of satisfaction, maybe even a little touch of magic.

In this episode, I’m going to tell you about how I ditched a product led, checklist kind of life, and learned to engage more with the everyday process of living. How I dialed my fiber processing all the way back to the raw material that came right off of an animal I raised or knew. And how much that process of transformation has enriched my every day. I’m going to talk with others who transform raw materials too. Josefine Waltin is a Swedish fiber artist who teaches students to spin by teaching them her philosophy of connection with raw fiber. And Kim Biegler of Ewethful Fiber Farm told me about the realizations when she rescued a 400 pound bale of Suffolk wool from being burned by the shepherd who needed room in his barn. Greg and I will share about the transformation that has happened to our hands and how going from using our brains, to using our hands has improved us for the better. 

You may not be ready to pick every little leaf off of a basil plant to make your own pesto, and you may not be excited about scouring raw fleece to make your own sweater, but I hope you have a listen, because you might just get inspired to use your hands to make something from scratch. Because, I hope you will hear, when we can engage in that kind of a process we find new meaning. When we transform things with our hands, we transform the way we live.

While cleaning up in our barn one day, shoveling away animal waste, I approached Greg with a thought that had been knawing at me. 

“So what about this idea,” I said while cleaning. “You know, I was just outside trying to torch the weeds and the gravel. And you were making the bunny nests box from scrap plywood. And, you know, whenever I do some kind of repetitive process or a process that is just sort of taking what we already have and turning it into something new, I do think about the slowness of it all. That I’m not going to get the driveway done in a day. That’s 10 minute increments, basically, you know, that you pick the basil leaves off, and it’s repetitive. One thing adds up to another kind of thing. And we do buckets of poop. One bucket at a time, you know, I mean, it’s like, well, it’s the same. “

“It’s the same rhythm every day,” Greg answered. “And it’s also just a lot of making use of what’s already here. But I think that’s just farm life. That’s what everyone who lives on a farm. 

“But I think it’s being really connected to work. And the hands that do the work or the bodies that do the work, right Greg,” I said.

“Yeah, I mean, we are out there, going through the same motions, taking care of the animals every day. And they take care of us because they give us our garden. And they give us fiber to sell. And it all comes from the work we put in the effort we make, to kind of move things and that generative direction, you know that the direction where things grow, fiber grows, and vegetables grow. And that’s all about the labor that we put in to connect to that process. You don’t put the labor in and you don’t have a process,” Greg said.”

“Yeah. Well, but compare that to your experience. You know, you and I both had careers that didn’t have hand labor involved. We had mind labor involved,” I said. And the product was sometimes a little hard to identify. Intangible. Right?”

“I know there’s something less satisfying about it,” Greg responded.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Well, I mean, I think it’s something that working with your body working with your hands has the potential to teach you, right? The idea of a process that if you appreciate the work, even though it’s hard, or you are in it and present to it, even though it’s hard work, that it’s worthwhile, and it’s satisfactory, You’re satisfied by it. Right? You don’t have to be satisfied by the product, you can be satisfied by the work.”

Greg nodded in agreement. 

“And so that could be why it’s okay, for things to take a lot longer than they might, for instance, if I’m going to make a hat, it could take me months to make a hat if I start from scratch,” I continued. “But it’s not because the hat at the end is really any better, than the one that you could go buy at the store. You know, I mean, it depends on what store you would go to and what you would buy and that kind of thing. But in the end, it’s how did you spend your time? In terms of, what did you work on? What did you put your hands in?”

“Yes. So what you’re saying is you don’t get that caught up in the product snd the outcome?” Greg asked.

“Well, I don’t as much,” I said. “It’s important for me to watch it because I can move around with my to-do list and check things off. And then at the end of the day, feel not very much satisfaction, even though I completed the products, or the tasks I had to do. But if I sort of redirect myself and say, you know, I get to work with that fleece today, and if I get a pound of it washed, and you know, I get to spin for 15 minutes, and you know, all of that, then it definitely adds up over time, but the actual living and working in that with that fleece is so satisfactory, doesn’t matter how far I got with it, you know?”

 “The only thing where I think I tend to push for a result too fast, is in working with the animals,” Greg replied. “And I often try to not do that. But I often want to make all this progress with them. And make the work go quickly and that most of the time just doesn’t work out very well. It does occasionally. But most of the time it just doesn’t work out so well. To push that result any faster than it’s just on its own it’s not gonna happen.”

“Yeah, and it’s like the to-do lists. If you’re pushing, you’re not enjoying the process, right? You’re living for the end result as opposed to the actual interaction or right smaller step with the animal or whatever,” I said.

I am a firm believer in making for the sake of process. Afterall, that’s the essence of art therapy and as a former art therapist I believe that when you engage in the process of externalizing feelings in your art, you are expressing those feelings and transforming them. When you make the feelings tangible, like with line and form and color, you can work with them. It honestly doesn’t matter what the art looks like, it’s just the act of making it that matters. And when your hands and senses are enlisted in this endeavor, you are experiencing new ways of being with yourself, your feelings, the world. But it wasn’t until I started working with raw wool that my own personal fireworks show started. I mean, I love it. It’s tactile and soothing and completely mesmerizing to work with stinky fleece that has come straight off of the sheep. It turns out, I’m not alone. 

Many of you listeners are going to recognize yourselves in this section. Some of you are going to have serious questions–like WHY the heck would they do that? Either way, I am so happy to share the wisdom of Josefin Waltin with you. She is a Swedish fiber artist whose videos on instagram and youtube should be on a playlist entitled, Spin for Calm.

Josefin explains, “It’s a process. It’s something I’m in here. And now. And for me, the whole journey from the raw, dirty flees to a finished knitted or woven garment, is the process. And I want every part of it to be enjoyable to be mindful. And so I go through the steps in that, in that manner, that everything is supposed to be mindful, restful, soothing, from picking the fleece through teasing, cardding, etc, not just the verry, in the whole perspective, short piece that is the spinning. So it’s the whole process and to be there in that moment.”

I wanted to know what the motivation, for Josefin, is behind starting from the raw material…. which is a sheep fleece in her case. I know I love it, but I wanted to know how she explains it for herself.

I was able to speak to Josefin over the phone while she was in Sweden. 

“So, I am sort of a recent spinner (in the last five years),” I explained. “And I dove in while I started with our own guanaco fleece. That was my big learning curve. But after that, I said, Oh, I love those pretty dyed braids, and I bought a bunch of dyed braids, and I realized they’re fun. The color is just lovely. But when I bought my first raw fleece, there was something about it that clicked for me. And it’s very much what you’re saying. It’s like I want, I guess. I’m trying to put my finger on that, what I want to start at the beginning. I want to feel what it feels like to start at the very beginning and have my hands in every process and there’s I think it’s an honor but it’s also like I don’t know it’s a privilege. In this day and age it’s a privilege, isn’t it?“

“Yeah. Yes, it is,” Josefin said. “I mean, it’s  every second I spend with this fleece is time to get to know it to understand how this particular fleece works. And if I start from that raw fleece, that’s how I get to know it from the start from, from its original shape as a fleece as a shelter or a protection for the sheep. And then I can keep that connection to sort of transform it to a protection for myself. Very much recreated. But still, there is a connection, if I get the further the more other hands that have been through the wall, or other or machines, the further away I get from that sheep. When I start from that raw, dirty fleece, I can see traces of her living room, I see the seeds, I see the needles. In my very first fleece, I found a Chestnut and that is my connection to her. And since I take these quite small steps, they are time consuming, but they also give me time with the fleece. So I dive my hands into this raw, dirty fleece and discover it in all these steps. And through those steps, I always keep the connection to the fact that this comes from a sheep that is growing its wool and I got it as a gift. And she keeps on growing it for the next time. So to me it is important to always be reminded that this came from someone and that I have a responsibility to make it beautiful and to enjoy the ride.”

“That’s lovely,” I added. “If a student came to you and said ‘I’m never going to process my own fleece. I’m not interested, I just want to start from a, I don’t know, a braid.’ And like what would you say to them? What would be your response?”

Josefin said, “Well, that would be their choice but in my classroom, I want them to learn it and then they can decide afterwards if they come to my classroom. That is what I teach. If the course is on, suspended spindle spinning, we start from the fleece. I never present pre-processed wool in any of my classes. I always have them work from fleece. And that’s something that many people appreciate very much because they do understand both the wool and the spinning better when they get to know it from the beginning.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” I said. “I think that’s very true. So that makes me think about you. You have such a lovely calm way of teaching. And not just in your breed studies, but even in your life, how do you process each step? Let me think about what I’m actually asking, is that part of your philosophy, if you can connect with others and teach them to be so mindful of their interaction with fiber and that it is important to you to inspire others to do that?”

“Definitely,” she said. “When I’m teaching face to face courses here in Sweden, I usually do some sort of an introduction and then I go to the first step that is usually picking or teasing the fleece. And after a few minutes, there is silence. Everybody is in both their own fiber bubble but also in the bubble in the room. We’re all in this crafting bubble together and there’s usually very kind conversations that evolve in this context. So yes, I want people to find that peace and mindfulness in their work in their crafting because it’s such an important part of any crafting to find the flow to find that space where the thoughts can come and go, and just just be in the making be in their hands.”

“I love that, too,” I told Josefin. “With you, feeling so dedicated to connecting with the sheep and honoring where the materials came from, what do you think that gives you in your life or in your own personhood? How does that affect you?”

“It’s a very important part in my day to day life to be able to be creative. I’m a very introverted person, and diving into wooll in any kind of way, be it in teasing or picking or spinning or knitting or what have you,” Josefin admitted. “To have the wool in my hands. It’s, part of, of this, of the balance I need in my life. You know, you do your work, go to work, you exercise you, whatever you have on your daily schedule. I need wool. Someday, sometime during the day, or some other creative activities. So it’s a very important part for me. For my balance.”

I adore han- processing raw wool now. I consider it an important part of my life balance. But it hasn’t always been this way. In my former life, before we moved to the farm, I was a knitter. I delighted in transforming yarn into knit garments. It was a passion of mine. When I look back, I am so surprised at what I didn’t know. How I didn’t pay any attention to where the yarn came from. I hadn’t even considered that there was a world where the source of the yarn was a thing. Turns out I wasn’t alone. Kim Biegler of Ewethful Fiber mill made the same confession when talked this month.

“When I got my first sheep, I actually was like, not kidding, I was like, “oh, a wool sheep!”” Kim laughed. “What’s that? No. Like, I mean, I don’t even really think I had thought so much about where like that wool came from sheep. You know, I mean, obviously, you see pictures of sheep and you know they have wool, but connecting the dots was not really an important part of my life at that point. Like, it’s so easy to never look at anything beyond what is at the store. So I would walk into a yarn shop and be like, this one’s super soft. And it’s super squishy. And the colors are calling to me. I didn’t even look at the content of what the yarn was. I didn’t even know to ask like what sheep is this.”

“Or, where was it milled? Is it millspun? Or where was it? It was just DK or sport weight or a good color. Here we go,“ I shared.

“Man have I come a long way from soft and pretty,” Kim chuckled.

“Yeah, no kidding,” I said.

“And to me, you know, now I have such a different definition of what beautiful woolen yarn looks like,“ Kim said. “My husband, he’ll come in when I’m washing something and he’s like, oh my goodness, this smell and I’m like, Isn’t it glorious? The smell when you open like I don’t even mind the smell when I open up a really ramie fleece for people that don’t know a ram sleeve can smell significantly stinky compared to a beautiful fleece. Just the hormones involved in it. But yeah, I went down a rabbit hole to say the least.”

Kim told me about one particularly rough processing experience that really exemplifies her love of process. She captures my love of transforming raw fiber in this very extreme story.

“It amazes me like you were saying how I can take something so gunky and sometimes gross, like I bought I don’t know if you watch any of my stuff, but I bought a 400-pound bale of Suffolk commercial, basically commercially grown wool so not something that most hand spinners would blink an eye to spend the time on,” Kim said. “But I had seen the sheep, they were my neighbors. And when I finally saw him one day I was like you know it was low priced obviously because it’s not skirted, well hit and miss how many of the fleeces are going to be good in there. And it was rough. I mean, there is no doubt about it. This was much rougher than what most of us spinners are used to seeing when we buy raw wool. But in time I learned so much from the process of gauging what was going to be good and what wasn’t going to be good very quickly. What to toss and let go of and what to keep. Then how to actually process this fiber to its best this last month in my yarn club, I sent out an ad for 20 Suffolk wool alpaca blend yarn. It was spectacular. And for me like being and this is wool that really, it won’t even sell right now because the wool market has collapsed so much over the last couple of years, especially with COVID this will the had years of wool sitting that even our local brokers won’t buy because there’s just no market for it at this point. So a lot of shepherds have been sitting with this wool in their barns for years. So it’d be able to take something that is basically collecting dust, for reals. I think he’d be happy if he could burn it at this point just to get it out to take something like that and turn it into something that you know, people are hand spinning, and they love it. It’s opened up a world I think, to a lot of hand spinners and knitters that I know that wouldn’t have looked at it. So to me, that is, it’s amazing. And it’s such a wonderful feeling. And it’s so fun to get people inspired, with something that they otherwise probably wouldn’t have come across,” Kim said.

I asked Kim about her spinning. She spins everyday and teaches people to spin in her online classes.

“It’s just so therapeutic for me,” she said. “I find so much calm by sitting at my wheel, and knitting too. But I tell people all the time I knit for a long time off and on. When I learned to spin man, it was a whole different ball game of calm and connection for me. Just the whole act of it. It’s what people see, I think on Instagram, and I think it translates well there. It’s not just, you know, so much of social media is us trying to create this perfect looking world. And I tell people, that’s really not that it is actually the world like that. Yeah, like that’s how it feels to me when I’m spinning the way the effect that you’re getting Yes, with some lovely music, which adds to it. But that’s how it is. That’s the reality of spinning. For me. It’s just calming, it’s meditative. I get lost in it. You know, if I say I’m gonna go spin, I can’t spin for 10 minutes. There’s no spinning for 10 minutes for me if I sit at my wheel, time is gone, you know?”

“Right. I feel it,” I said. “Do you feel it? If you haven’t spun that day do you go ooh, I need to spin?” 

“Yeah. And my husband does too,” Kim said. “And I tell people, my husband’s not trying to be mean or condescending in any way. But if he sees my anxiety level going up, or my stress level going up, he used to say, Do you want to knit for a little bit? And now he’s like, maybe you should go sit at your wheel for a little bit. And he’s not in any way. Trying to be rude or mean, it’s just that he knows that this is the place where I go to. And really just takes me down so many notches. What do you think it is for you?” Kim asked me.

“For me, I think it has to do with the idea of being part of a process, as opposed to just a product,” I said. “And if you can take wool all the way back, which is literally raising the sheep or even like, you know, being there when they’re born, you know, and going all the way through to a hat.To me, it’s not about the hat, it’s about that just deep, slow, you know, non-commercialized process that helps me feel completely connected and I suppose that that would be the same if I was a woodworker, but for some reason it does it for me and I guess I can’t answer that part.”

Greg asked me the same question.

“You process all the fiber by hand. Not just scouring it but carting it, spinning it,” he said. “So it must feel like at the end of the day, you’ve had your hands on the fiber in all of its manifestations?”

“Yeah, I still can’t answer why that is so satisfying to me. I just love it. I don’t know. There’s something about the origin of things.”

“Making something with your own hands from scratch,” Greg said.

“Yeah, from starting at the beginning, starting as far back to the beginning as you can possibly go,” I said.

That’s it. It’s about the raw materials. It’s about being in the process of transformation.

It’s about that gunky fleece and how it changes when it’s washed and carded. It’s about the fluff that becomes orderly yarn. With my shawl, way before I walked into the pasture for that last filming, it was about one ounce batches of rolags made from hand blended guanaco and merino that I scoured and flicked and teased, then carded into smooth cigars to give a consistently fine spin. Over time, the one ounces added up just like the bobbins filled, slowly. With each 15 minutes I could snatch out of my busy schedule to quietly give the fine fiber twist. And then the knitting. The lace pattern that took an hour to complete one row of the 450 stitches. Looking at the chart for reference every couple of minutes. Sliding the stitches along the needles. Knit, purl, yarn overs each one exacting to make up the overall cathedral window pattern that came to life only after the shawl was wet and stretched with blocking wires. Each part a small contribution to the making of a precious shawl that embodies the whole experience. And what is it not?It’s not about the product. It’s not about the shawl. It’s Not about completion. It’s not about the jolt of short lived satisfaction when I get to cross something off on a checklist. And while we are thinking about that, how about we extend that to all of life. It’s not about the job you get or the house you buy or what you end up with in the end. It’s about living. 

It’s about the slow steady work of our hands, and the routine of it. Each sensory filled step adding up, leading to the next step. And being here for all of it. 

“So after, you know, four or five years of working with your hands, and lifting and fixing and all of the gardening and all that kind of stuff, what has that done to your hands?” I asked Greg.

“It beat them up pretty bad,” Greg said with a smile. “I have to say. Yeah. I mean, you know, you and I don’t wear wedding rings anymore, because they’re so bent up.”

“So are you happy you get your hands get a turn Greg?” I questioned.

“I am. I’m very happy my hands get a turn,” he said. “I hope they can last about another decade or so. But I’m very happy that they can get a turn.”

So, I have a suggestion: while you may not be someone who loves to transform stinky wool into a sweater that’s okay. I totally get it, but try transforming something. Try to find the ingredients for pesto and make it yourself. Or go on a nature walk and collect some flowers for a bouquet. Make something from scratch. Let your hands get dirty and delight in the process of transforming something. Or Actually here’s an idea — try transforming your list. Make it a process list instead of a product list. Transform your to do’s into sensory experiences. Like, Instead of do the dishes — it would say watch soapy water clean plates. Or instead of go for a walk it would say, admire and smell flowers and dirt. And remember, when you celebrate the process of making you are celebrating living. And that’s so magical, it transforms everything.

Thanks for listening. If you’d like to hear more stories about our farm life and what we learn when we live close to nature and use our hands to make things from what we raise, be sure to follow us on your favorite podcast listening app. Or, if you want to be notified every time we post a new episode, you can sign up for those notifications on our website, afiberlife.com.