Yarn

The vacation has carried through this weekend as Danny and I decided to stay in Guelph and partake of the Elora Fergus Studio Tour yesterday. It was a pleasant way to spend a wet fall day, but I haven't had much time to catch up with friends or process photos.

The main event of our week was dyeing yarn with natural products. This was my first experiment ever with dyes, although I've had a lifelong love affair with colour, and particular interest in the uses of plants. So perhaps this will launch a kind of career.

I had intended to use the outdoor fire pit for heating our dye cauldrons, but practical considerations and inclement weather induced us to use the cottage kitchen instead. It's inadvisable to use a kitchen for a dye studio, but the only mordants we employed were nontoxic.

We went on two excursions and collected several plant materials, but the process was time-consuming so in three days we only had time to test goldenrod flowers—a traditional and reliable source of good yellows—and beech leaves. The goldenrod filled the cottage with a strong sweet fragrance like honey. Our first dye lot produced the two rich gold skeins on the left, and the second batch in the same dye (called an exhaust bath), produced the brighter, clearer yellow next to them.

I was particularly excited to see what the latter dye would produce, because beech is my favourite tree and we have an abundant source of leaves in the forest lining our cottage road. They produced a deep rust-coloured dye, but the wool only picked up a pale orangy-beige colour (four skeins on the right). Danny was frustrated with this, but I still like the colour of this yarn, suggesting the colour of winter beech leaves, which cling like ghosts to the branches until spring. It would be interesting to experiment with beech leaves and a wider range of mordants, which affect the colour of the dye.

Also this week I completed another scarf (second photo), which I had started in April and mostly completed last spring, but finally got around to knitting a few more rows and darning in the ends. The pattern is available online and I used the same Manos del Uruguay yarn (as in this icon). The colour is called wildflower. I call this my herringbone scarf; the herringbone stitch was awkward to learn, but reminds me of a blue and white quilt in a similar pattern, which my great grandmother made for my birth.

I didn't knit all summer, but this clears my bag for several incipient fall projects.

Danny and I visited Philosopher's Wool in Inverhuron on Friday morning, and had a tour of their facility. Yesterday, as part of the studio tour, we took in Wellington Fibres, saw their herd of goats and the machinery for processing the fleece into mohair. We brought home a few new skeins from both places.

Dream of a shining stag

I have been trying to write down a brief dream I had, and how it connects with people I have known, but the strands are becoming complicated.

Wouter and Kathleen were two close university friends who were killed by a drunk driver in September 1984. Wouter was my roommate.

I had met Nancy and Peter on my summer job that year. They became fast friends, the only ones who offered consistent emotional support and companionship after Wouter and Kathleen's death.

In December 1984 I took Nancy and three of her friends to the cottage for New Years. Not long after we arrived, I and a fellow named Ian went down to the lake to drill a hole and haul up water. We were returning when a buck bounded from behind the far corner of the cabin and passed obliviously within three metres of us, panting heavily. Its mouth was hanging open and it moved with a lumbering, exhausted pace. Still, it crossed the frozen lake quickly enough to reach the far shore, some 500 metres away, before we could summon Nancy and the others. That was the only time I ever saw a deer near the cottage.

Nancy and Peter were married several years later. They were the only Christian friends who didn't shun me when I came out of the closet in 1996, but we have fallen out of contact since. I heard recently from a mutual friend that Peter is ill.

Last week at the cottage, I was reading Danny's book on natural dyes, Indigo, Madder and Marigold, by Trudy Van Straalen. I had read it once before, but overlooked something: the book is dedicated to the memory of her son, Wouter. The memory of Trudy's warmth and generosity suddenly overwhelmed me. About two years after Wouter and Kathleen's funerals, she came to Guelph and took their friends out to dinner because she wanted to make sure we were doing well, but that was our last contact.

The night I saw Trudy's dedication, or perhaps the next, I had an unusually vivid dream. It began with a distinct rustling sound. This must have been Danny rolling over, because I don't normally hear dreams that way. Then a beautiful eight-point stag lept out darkness and followed a peculiar curve around me. This animal was vibrant with energy, alert to my presence, and had light in its antlers. It seemed about to pause in front of me, but the dream ended after about three seconds.

Its curving path seemed significant somehow, but it has taken me a few days to figure it out: that was the curve the deer followed down from our cottage, past dark undergrowth, and was meant to remind me of a New Years spent at Lake Fletcher with Nancy. Suddenly I am aware that the previous dream I recorded here was also connected to her.

Initially, I took the book as encouragement to contact Wouter's mother. That I should do, but the imagery of this dream reminds me I have a greater debt to Nancy and Peter. It's time to overcome my aversion to old griefs and reconnect with people who have loved me well. I would like to be there for friends who supported me when no one else would.