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Sunday, February 17, 2013

"Wool"

There’s a sign on the edge of the town where I grew up that says “Where the city meets the country”.  That was true when I was a kid.  Working farms used to be mixed amongst the homes nestled behind trees.  I could climb a tree and drop onto a cow’s back for a thrilling ride across a pasture.  I could feed horses hard green apples and listen to illegal migrant workers speaking Mexican in the field.

Sometimes I’m aware that the kind of variety I grew up with is unusual.  I was both a city and a country kid.  I knew wealthy people and poor people.  I got to milk a goat and I got to go to the art museum.  It seems like most other people live either by farms or they live by the city, but not both.  Considering that I really didn’t know very many people at all, the variety I got to experience seems pretty remarkable.

The farms I knew weren’t like today’s farms.  The farms I knew were mostly tax write-offs for the super-rich, or hobby farms for people who felt like dabbling, or a spattering of working farms of a couple hundred acres or less.  Raising sheep seems like a luxury.  It’s not like they’re eaten very much around here.  They’re raised for wool, and since nobody actually needs wool any more, making something from it means you’ve got enough leisure for a hobby, but it’s the kind of hobby that comes from being raised to think you need to do something productive.  Knitting for pleasure seems like a middle class kind of activity.

I used to like watching sheep getting sheared.  They didn’t seem to enjoy it too much though.  Ba-aaaah!  I can do an awesome sheep bleat imitation.  It’s one of my many skills that seem underappreciated by anyone except small children.  I do an awesome cow too.

I have picked burrs out of the wool, carded it, even spun some of it.  I didn’t have to do any of it.  I was just bored and lonely, and rubbing down a freshly shorn sheep made me laugh.  Sometimes I think that all those things I did when I was bored and lonely were gifts that so many other people don’t know they’ve missed.  There’s something good and happy about haying a field when you don’t actually have to do it.  I was just helping because I could and because I enjoyed laughing with the group.

Sometimes I feel like I should write about things like this because they’re from an era that doesn’t exist anymore.  They didn’t even really exist in my own time.  I was just lucky to be in a place where time and money allowed my little pocket of the world to exist a little longer than it did anywhere else.

I hooked this rug when I was young.  I’ll admit that it’s craft more than art, but I put a lot of time into it, and it is made out of wool.  It just seems fair to show it off at least once.

13 comments:

  1. Spent some time haying as well. It was a hoot for a city kid. Riding on the fender of the tractor's big wheel beside Mike's granddad on the way back to the barn was a bonus. The smell of fresh hay will always take me back there.

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  2. I need to compile a list of Linda quotes, such as:
    "There’s something good and happy about haying a field when you don’t actually have to do it"
    among others.

    I grew up with some people who had farms on the side, so I often got to "play" on them, and you're right. Those work/play experiences should be appreciated. Not everyone gets to have them.

    Nice rug! It does look like it took some time.

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  3. I'm quotable? Oooooh! I never know when something like that's going to happen :) I'm glad I'm not the only one who got to play on a farm. There is something special about the smell of fresh mown hay. Thanks for the comments!

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  4. We had one like that with a leopard!

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  5. Wow, yours is wonderful, I was a horrible crafter as a child! My Mum tried so hard, too! My creativity took another route and I'm always amazed when I see what other artists have created in their youth. :) I didn't grow up on a farm, but it was very rural, and we had chickens, ducks, a cow, a pond filled with fish and many other wonderful natural things, and I feel I am so much better for having experience that, because I had my fill of urban decay, too! LOL! You always provoke me into such long diatribes here. LOL! Imagine the conversations we would have at a coffee shop....:)

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  6. It would be so much fun to hang out with you Indigene! Any time you're in Cleveland! :)

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  7. I got to visit a cousin's farm in upstate New York when I was about eleven. It was very exciting to me, but a hard life for them. It's too bad more people don't have at least a vegetable garden. But I've been meaning to plant one for three years now. Also, I do a decent horse neigh. Haha.

    It does sound like you had a very lucky and interesting childhood. It's also strange to think about how far people have come technologically in such a short time, and how easy it is to forget the lessons of just a few short generations ago.

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  8. We have come a long way in a short time. Sometimes I wonder if it's always an "advance" or if we've lost important things along the way? In the meantime, I've got an image of all of us making animal sounds together :)

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  9. I didn't not grow up in such a rich mix of people and landscapes - although we moved quite a bit when I was a child. So I guess I got quite a bit of variations in a different way. It seems like quite a tedious work to make that rug. It probably took some time to finish? Once creative, always creative...

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  10. It did take a long time to make this rug. I think it might've taken a winter or more. Maybe all that crafting gave me more patience with my art? I've always thought that moving around a lot as a kid would be hard, maybe I've thought so because I never went anywhere? Thanks for the comment Otto!

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  11. I was a city kid - not high rises and subways, but I got around on buses and only saw animals beyond cats and dogs at the zoo. Come to think of it, I only saw cows when we traveled out-of-town, along rural highways.

    Nice that you still have that hooked rug from your childhood.
    Your childhood stories are filled with wonder and I enjoy reading them. I can't say the same, but I'm happy to get my fill of farms and nature nowadays.

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  12. I think the world is better when we live it in wonder, in whatever circumstances we're in when we're living in it. At least that's what I think on a good day Anita :)

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