Looking Out My Window

Before I was felled with chronic fatigue syndrome, I had tremendous energy. Sometimes I would have to go walking for an hour or more just to settle down enough to grade papers or study.

But when I became ill, I was very happy to have enough energy just to make it through the day. And I started spending a lot of time sitting in my chair with my feet up, looking out the window.

I'd always considered myself an observant person, and I was, when it came to people and certain things. But although I'd spent a lot of time outside and had looked at my surroundings, I hadn't really stood still long enough to actually see what I was looking at.

Sitting in my chair changed that.

The sky became my daily moving picture, better than a movie and certainly better than TV. I live in Michigan, just north of Detroit, and we supposedly do not have particularly thrilling skies, at least not as thrilling as New Mexico. But when I spent those months, which turned into years, looking at the sky, I eventually saw every color in the spectrum.

I've even written some very nice descriptions of what I saw, but I don't want to include them here. Instead, I prefer to urge you to start looking out your windows. If it's a gray day, is that sky all one color of gray? Is it even or bumpy? Calmly gray or threateningly? If you were to knit or crochet what you see, how many different shades and/or textures of gray yarn would you need? Would you need only gray, or are there other colors blending in?

And what about the grass? Even during the height of summer, there is more than once shade, especially if your lawn isn't as manicured as the Queen's gardens in England. What does the crab grass look like? The little clovers? Do you have any dandelions? Any dead or dying spots? If you were to weave a tapestry of your grass, what colors and textures would you need? How would you show the prickliness of grass? Or would you prefer to make a tapestry that looked like rolling waves?

Take some yarn, and make little pieces or big pieces. Crochet, knit, weave, wrap, stitch, knot, glue, or anything else you can think of. Use long and short pieces of yarn. Combine two or more yarns together, then separate another piece into its component strands. Make a jumble on the floor or a table. Throw a bunch up in the air like confetti and let the pieces fall where they please. Take photos of your results, or just scoop up the yarn and save the image in your memory. Or wipe the slate of your mind clean and start over and over and over.

I love to just play with my yarn. I sort it, I feel it, I take some different yarns and hold them together and dream about what I could do with them. I spend a lot of time dreaming about my yarn, both when I'm asleep and when I'm awake.

What do you do with your yarn, besides use it?