Skirting My Last Two Bags Of Wool

“It is better not to think about all the dark morning and the knife-like rain, or the stink of sheep dip, the parasitic worms and the stabbing.  It was better not to weight the hour upon hour of lugging bags of feed to the fank against so little money. ”  From “John of John” by Douglas Stuart

I skirted the last of my wool today.  That’s me running my fingers through  a hunk of Robin’s fleece to make sure it’s clean of sticks, seeds, thorns, or anything else that might get stuck in it.

I’m reading John of John by Douglas Stuart.  It takes place on the Isle of Harris in Scotland.  It’s about a relationship between a father and son.  But, their work of raising sheep and weaving tweed (Harris Tweed)  in the “traditional way”  plays a big role in the story.

That means  by hand on a loom with foot petals like the one I was weaving on last year at the Cambridge Historical Society.

I’m in no way a sheep farmer like the characters in this novel, but I can relate.  Not that you have to know a thing about sheep or weaving to get immersed in the story.

“He loved to see all the components that went into bringing him the yarn, and then, all the septs that happened after he had when the cloth.  It anchored him, to be a part of this. It made him feel real, and not just a figment of his own imagination, a ghost haunting a tin shed.” from John of John.