Yeah, yeah, I know you had to write a 3-paragraph essay on that one in high school too. And you may, like me, have forgotten the exact wording of it and had to look up again whether it was Ezra Pound or William Carlos Williams who came up with it. (Hint: it was the good doctor.)

But it’s also probably the best slogan I could hope for the kind of materially grounded theoretical framework I’m playing around with (hang on to your hats, it’s gonna get a lot weirder around the place from here on out).

And it’s a good spur for me to have more things on this blog. I don’t mean posting more (although I hope to) but I mean really celebrating the thingness of all the things that go into fiber arts. This will be difficult since this is, after all, a blog. It’s by definition abstract and immaterial and wordy. But just imagine you’ve come to hang out in my living room, and we’re sipping our tea, and all of a sudden I jump up from the couch and yell, “Oh! I have to show you this!” and run off down the hall to rummage through the insane den of textilic mayhem that I call my “bedroom.” And I come out triumphant, and proudly place into your hands…

…a nøstepinne. (With inexpertly wound center-pull ball of extremely overspun cotton singles.) This one came from Trif’s Turnings, the woodturner who always shows up at Lambtown with an ever-expanding array of handmade spinning tools. A couple years ago I took a lathe class in the hopes of turning my own spindles, but, uh, no. So I’m quite happy to support someone else who wants to make such lovely toys for us fiber freaks.

Shopping for a nøstepinne is the next best thing to finding yourself in Ollivander’s. No unicorn tail or powdered dragon toenails, but all different woods and weights and you really just have to play with each one and see how it twirls to know that yes, this is the Right One. And yes, I realize that I basically paid good money for a stick, but it’s a really nice stick, and a definite step up from the empty toilet paper roll I usually resort to.