i once kept a flock of sheep.

raisin was my first ewe, named for her thompson seedless raisin brown.

then i found a few more including truffle and lily who came from trudy van stralen

rambam(!) no comment on his name;

then a goat called trouble,

who birthed adonis

the most beautiful mohair kid in the world.

at that time

i was making paper from local fibers.

dyeing with fungi and lichens,

weaving tapestries,

and raising a few angora bunnies.

my spinning included silk,

wild silk (spider and moth)

and crept over into the realm of cellulose.

i couldn't imagine why spin cellulose?

and now i say look at this, natural pale green cotton sliver

from kristin

which deepens with a cook to the color

in the little skein.

a lovely cotton.

(very hard to capture the color in the photo, even with adjustment)

and here is hemp,

all the way from japan,

and the clever fingers of chica notch.

she included a lovely wrapping cord of two ply hemp,

i suppose.

more rustic and quite lovely, too.

my 2-ply twined dogbane or indian hemp

is from the bast of the dried, field retted stems.

the coil grows slowly.

i have made paper from this fiber,

wonderful paper, actually,

that included the wild and slender seed pods,

packed with seeds on fibers smaller than milkweed

and ready to airlift the seeds to eager soil.

i am here,

at the new year,

looking both ways,

forward and back and

considering.