Tricks and treats in spinning and life

Sometimes I think the reason we have fiber love is to help us through the awful, because it really does.  It doesn't make bad stuff better, but it sure does feel comforting.

The fiber I'm showing you today is dyed in the Trick-or-Treat colourway from Twisted Fiber Art; even though I was already swimming in stuff to spin, I bought it on purpose and not just through a club like usual.  Green and orange and purple and yum?  Oh yeah.  These are great mood-boosters, all of them.

I had to spin some during a rainstorm, inside...

but I got to spin the rest out on the porch.

Trick or treat is so true of life, don't you think?  So much in varying degrees of good, and so much in varying degrees of not good, and all of it jumbled together so that you don't quite know what's coming next.

Earlier in the week I went on a mini-holiday and one of my first stops was at a really cool small-community museum I'll tell you all about later because Mittens.

But today, after a pretty crummy few days for me and horrible ones for a lot of other people I know or live near - well, today seems like a good day to tell you about a small memorial wall there dedicated to residents who'd fought in one or the other of the World Wars.  One of the picture frames was a memory box holding a fork with some cloth tied around it and here is the story behind it:

A young, local man enlisted for WWI and was sent west from his parents' farm for training.  Later he was put on a train heading east, to ship out to France.  The train passed right alongside his parents' farm, but wasn't stopping in their town.  He knew he'd be stopping in Montreal for a few days before going overseas, but it wasn't going to be enough time to get back to the farm to say goodbye.  So when the train slowed, as it did on every run, to allow the conductor to throw a stack of newspapers out for the townspeople to read?  This man tied a note for his parents to a fork from the dining car, and threw it out too.  It was passed along to his parents, who put it in the memory box, and kept it with them always until eventually it ended up in the museum.

Given the statistics you will not be surprised to know that he died in France, so that this fork and that note were all they had.  Would you have thought of that solution to his problem?  I wouldn't - I would have fussed and stressed and felt sad and helpless watching my home whisk past my window.  I think that man was very resourceful and clever and loving to treat his family to one last special thing.

It's funny how there is so much we have no control over, and yet the little we can control has so much impact.  Like a fork thrown through a window, or energy stored in tiny strands of wool that bind it and make it warm and strong and useful.

Some of you will have just finished off a week that had a lot of less than ideal stuff in it because as Les used to say, "That's life."  So I hope that even if your last few days have been terrible, this weekend will offer some comfort.  Maybe through time with people you love, or by finding some little thing you can control and use to improve the rest of your situation, or by working with some really good fiber - because that's one thing we can always count on.  You know, that soft things are nice to touch, and colour can make us feel happy.

So - take care of yourself, whether you're hanging in or hanging out, and I'll see you on Monday!