Fiber Art

Going through a fire is a curious thing. When I ran out of my burning house on the night of February 5, 2014, my life was in the process of changing forever in ways it would take years to see and understand. One thing that I lost that night and haven’t gotten back since was my life as a fiber artist. I lost big baskets full of my handspun art yarns, fiber art pieces in process including a nearly 15′ long “Rainbow Serpent Of The Dreamtime” that I had been working on for nearly a year crocheted from more than 30 of my handspun yarns. It was a piece of my heart. So many more aspects of my fiber life were gone. Hand carders and the big drum carder I made “batts” on. (Batts are rolls of fluffy, beautiful fibers with many elements for spinning in them, I made and sold my batts and handspun art yarns and fiber pieces before the fire.) That night my fiber life was the last thing on my mind. I barely made it out with my dogs, I lost my 4 beloved parrots in the fire, a lifetime of physical possessions and more than I care to go into yet again, but the loss of that part of me that was a fiber artist would prove to be a greater loss than I could have imagined or realized.

Time goes on, years go by, and the funny thing about life after a fire is that you have a kind of amnesia. You are in shock for some time, then you have to deal with very basic aspects of piecing a life back together on a survival level. You forget a lot about what you had and lost unless it was a very active part of your life at the time of the fire, or the loss of living things, and you move back into your rebuilt home as if into a stranger’s home, and you don’t know where anything is. That is another very curious thing about life after a fire. Directly after the time of the fire the insurance company mobilizes with several different people, the people who will rebuild the house come only after the team that photographs everything the way it looks after the actual fire. These photographs are a horror. Then they remove and destroy everything that was damaged or destroyed in the fire but they also do something very interesting. There are a curious assortment of things that may survive the fire. It is a real puzzle and a mystery as to what survives and what doesn’t. They photograph everything that remains in situ and after the fire, pack it up and put it in storage, and after the house is rebuilt and you are ready to move back in, months later, they bring everything back that survived, along with the things you have had to purchase to put back in the house, and they put it all away before you walk in the house. They are going by the pictures of where things were for the most part but because so much was lost and is gone there is no way to do exactly that. The upshot of the whole thing is you move into a house that feels like a strangers and you haven’t a clue where anything is.

I moved back into this house the end of September, 2014. I am still finding things I had no clue that I still had. They returned things that I found it impossible to believe could have survived and other things I thought might have made it are gone forever. In this way I discovered, after a time, that some of my handspindles and a few other small pieces of equipment, small handheld things, did indeed survive. But I didn’t have the heart to try to use them.

What did survive, however, was an amazing amount of fiber and yarn because it was in big plastic bins on the far side of the garage against a concrete wall. It was all there when I moved back in but I was so lost I didn’t think about it or care. But every time I go out into the garage to get something or get in my car there it all is. I have begun to look at it with a little more curiosity — what, exactly, is there? — but still without the will to do anything with it. At one point I did knit a little but not much and not for long. My heart just wasn’t in it.

And then there’s something else. I was not a properly trained fiber artist. I was self-taught. I couldn’t follow a pattern, knitting-wise, to save my life. I taught myself to handspin yarn and knit and crochet and everything that I did was freeform, intuitive, instinctive. I had a kind of wild, cockeyed, zest for creating, I loved it, I just forged ahead, I learned to create art yarns that I was proud of and fiber art pieces that delighted me. It was as if it was an ancient piece of my soul come alive, as if I had done it through lifetimes in a primitive sort of way. But then the fire happened, and I lost so much, and so much time went by, and I became afraid to try again. All that zest for creating was gone. I was too sad, and tired, and scared, and I didn’t have the money to replace all the things that were lost. I didn’t see the point. Finally it was as if I had forgotten that I could ever do any of it and I didn’t believe I could ever do it again.

I think that is the cruelest thing about a tragedy like a fire. “Things” can be replaced or will be forgotten, and frankly, once you lose so much in a fire “things” don’t seem important anymore. I used to love to shop — I loved it too much — but even if it was just inexpensive little thrift store finds I had an acquisitive nature that had me collecting things for years. When those things can be swept away in an instant it does something to you. Things don’t matter to me anymore. But, there was all that fiber, all that yarn, some spindles, some knitting needles and crochet hooks, my beloved spoolknitters. Some things remained. They surely did. But what the fire took that cut the deepest was the confidence I had once had in myself. A fire leaves you scared, and feeling unsafe in the world. It happens so quickly, without warning, and is so devastating it is hard to believe you can ever be safe again, that you will ever be able to have a life that matters, that you can count on. After a fire you can count on nothing.

But today something surged in me, a kind of awakening. I got up from my desk chair here, went into the garage, picked out a few spindles from a bucket they found their way into somehow when the insurance people were putting things away, and went through a couple of bins of fiber. I pulled out three bags of fiber and one handspun yarn. I sat here with it and stared at it. I didn’t know what to do or how to begin. I still don’t, but I pulled some fiber out of each bag and spread it here on the table before me. I cut a piece of the handspun yarn and tied it around the shaft of the spindle, winding it up around the hook on the top. I worked the fibers in my fingers and began. It is a messy, sad effort, I felt shy and embarrassed at how much I seem to have forgotten, but I started.

It is all sitting here around me now. I remember the days when my work table was full of books and notebooks — all the accoutrements of my writing life — and bags of fiber all around me, all different types of fibers, every color of the rainbow, and a jar full of spindles, handmade wooden crochet hooks, and more — the accoutrements of my fiber life — and they were all of a piece. I always had them side by side because when I got too much in my head with my writing I would shift to the work of my hands, my fiber work. It created a much needed balance. I realized today that a big part of my emotional difficulties since the fire has been that I have lived completely in my head, with anxiety and depression, and my broken heart, with nothing to balance it. We need to move from our head to our hands to have balance. I had none at all.

I really am afraid. I am afraid that I won’t be able to do it again, that I won’t do a good job. But who am I doing it for anyway? I am doing it for myself. I am not going to start a fiber business. If, as time goes along, I have a piece of fiber art for sale here or there, I will share it here on my blog, but if that does happen it will be way down the line. I will spin yarns for my own use. Right now, in this moment, I have promised myself that I will spin a spindle full of yarn just to do it, just to see how it feels. It feels awkward. It is like having ridden a bicycle all your life and then being afraid to get on one. Finally, you learned how to once and you can learn how to again. I learned how, once upon a time. I will find my way.

The fire took so much. I will not let it take this. I don’t know how it will turn out but today I have begun. For now, it is enough.