Collective Unconscious

There are moments when the idea of a collective unconscious seems too obvious not to be true. In 1997 I had an urge to bring my knitting out of the house and onto the street. Little by little, I have noticed others with the same urge and today there is a worldwide movement - Guerilla Knitting - of people who knit and then place their knitting out in the world. There are many other examples that go beyond art or knitting (I guess so, anyway, although why anyone thinks about anything beyond art or knitting is, well, beyond me).

This summer, Shawn and I continually found ourselves thinking of things simultaneously related to our spinning and dyeing. Since Shawn is an open and generous person, she harboured no fears or jealousies about who did what first so we were able to experiment and play without worrying about who was originating things and who was "copying" if that term can really even be used. The interesting thing was that, in fact, our yarns were really so different despite using the exact same materials. Shawn is a painter with fleece. Her yarns are so painfully gorgeous with the way the colours interact that you want to cry, sing, and maybe eat them up all at the same time. My yarns, on the other hand, reflect that I am more of a sculptor - they have more structure and are pieced together in a more obvious way.

I am still waiting for the vast majority of my fleece to arrive in the mail from Newfoundland (hurry, please!), so I have been carding up the random bits and pieces that I have sitting around, left over from last spring. Last night, however, I made a skein of yarn that had Shawn written all over it. Not only was it her favourite colours, but it was spun as if her hands were doing the work, not mine. I love it but somehow I know it isn't mine. I am tempted to just give it to Shawn, but the truth is, she already has it.