Working on two making-related things today—yarn prep and design. Today, the yarn was removed from the niddy-noddy and skeins were unwound to begin soaking the yarn to complete the spinning process. As they are removed, you see all the action stored up in the yarn as it curls up on itself and looks like a fantastic pile of ramen noodles. We don’t want the fibers to begin to unspin themselves, so we’ll set the twist with a soak and mild wash in warm water. This will remove oils (from lanolin and from my own hands) and leaf matter from the yarn and cause the fibers in the yarn to interlock, forming a more integrated strand of finished yarn called as single.

I’m also continuing to think about design and concept. The kiddo and I spent the afternoon looking through the exhibition catalouge for the Sophie Taeuber-Arp show at MOMA, which is just about to close. There have been an amazing run of shows honoring female fiber artists in the last few years—Sheila Hicks at Centre Pompidou, Anni Albers at the Tate, the Arp show in NYC—each with their own publication or redesign/reissue of the artist’s major works. If we’re not traveling anywhere to see work in person, at least we can at least get a good peek at the work via interlibrary loan. Hick’s Weaving as Metaphor reissue is about as beautiful as an artists book can get. I mentioned yesterday that Byrne’s 1847 mathmatical illustrations of Euclid looked incredibly modern. They could easily be long-lost siblings to these Arp compositions, painted about 80 years later.