(This is the start of something I am writing Just trying it out for now.)

I am mesmerized by the action of a yarn swift. I wind wool, cotton, and cashmere hanks into cakes, often just for the feeling of the strands between my fingers. I luxuriate in the rhythm I create turning the handle of the winder, and the spinning, spinning, spinning of the swift. This movement weaves a thread from my hands, back through the hands of countless women down the centuries, bonds me to them, defines my place in the lineage, ignites my center. Isn’t it obvious, then, why sewing, knitting, weaving, and spinning words are so widely used to refer to connection, to bonds, to the continuity of things? Women hold things together.  We bind, we tie, we fix, we gather. We spread the balm on the wounds, and we share the knowledge of it with the women who will come after us. We guard and carry the histories, the meaning. When I wind wool I feel those women, my own women, in my bones.