A ball of yarn and a Navajo loom: weaving a new masculinity and a connection to the soul of the world.
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Artists tend to be unconventional people, and some of us are more radically independent and authentic than others.
It is Friday night and I am sitting at home alone, rolling hand-dyed yarn into balls. For just a moment, I step beyond myself and consider the scene, as if outside and looking through the windows.
The living room with its large, wool tufted rug is softly lit by a single bronze table lamp with an old-fashioned, Tiffany-style glass shade. On the narrow wooden table by the front windows, a pale yellow beeswax taper flickers softly, reflected in the glass against the dark night.
That same table is piled with several twisted, figure-8 looking ‘skeins’ of woolen yarn in natural hues — cream, butter, blue sky, chamisa, harvest gold, black. Some have already been rolled into softball-sized spheres, the sort of thing that cats dream of batting with paws and chasing around the floor as it rolls and unravels.
It could be a scene from the early 1900’s. Earlier, even. Remove the electric lamp, and the time frame blurs further.
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In front of the unlit fireplace and brick hearth, an upright Navajo-style loom stands with a thick sheepskin pelt placed on the floor before it.
An old upholstered chair rests beside the table with its bright candle and yarns, where a solitary individual with greying, unruly hair sits silently, a cup of tea within reach. Focused on the task, hands repeatedly unwind the skein draped over one knee and loop its freed yarn into a ball that, when finished, will be placed beside the others already completed.
It could be a scene from the early 1900’s. Earlier, even. Remove the electric lamp, and the time frame blurs further.
Winding yarn into balls in the quiet of a candlelit cottage is pan-cultural and nearly timeless. This could be the wild, elemental west coast of Ireland, a hut in the Peruvian Andes, or an adobe casita in the high desert of New Mexico. Wherever it really is, it seems a long way even from the neighbors along the street, those brightly lit houses with the ghostly blue glare of television illuminating their windows.
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Unraveling a skein and winding it into a ball is a gently repetitive process, one that easily becomes a meditation, hands traveling repeatedly in a circular motion, slowly building the wooly sphere with each pass round its circumference.
Most folks would probably be doing this while parked in front of the television, distracted and entranced. I don’t own a TV (it’s one of the many ways I am unconventional), and I am utterly content in my quiet, unhurried ritual.
Suddenly I chuckle out loud, causing my two English Whippets sleeping on the sofa to look up.
“This is so damn manly, sitting at home alone on a Friday night, winding balls of yarn and drinking tea. Just call me Grandma.”
The cultivated quietude of my life suits me, and while it appeals briefly to the harried and oh-so-busy, after a day or two, most people would run screaming back to their noisy distractions.
As the soulful poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote in Letters to a Young Poet, “What is needed is, in the end, simply this: solitude, great inner solitude. Going into yourself and meeting no one for hours on end—that is what you must be able to attain.”
Amen, Rilke.
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I’ve only recently begun weaving. As a writer who spends long hours stringing words together, rearranging and polishing them like colored beads on a necklace, I often yearn for something less mental. Something tactile and sensory. Tangible. That which I can step back from and actually see that I’ve created something more ‘real’ than a paragraph.
Frankly, I’ve long ago tossed aside those stale notions of what constitutes ‘masculine’; I am simply interested in whatever expresses and nourishes my soul in a creative, authentic way.
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I have long appreciated handmade ceramics and textiles, and one day, the rustic simplicity of a Navajo loom reached out to strum something in my old-fashioned soul.
In the craft/hobby/art field, weavers are predominantly women, and I’m enjoying upholding the minority. Frankly, I’ve long ago tossed aside those stale notions of what constitutes ‘masculine’; I am simply interested in whatever expresses and nourishes my soul in a creative, authentic way.
In our modern world, most of us ‘do’ but few of us ‘make’. Our paper economy has turned us into consumers rather than producers, and the once valued practice of having a ‘craft’ (as in craftsman or true artisan) has largely been abandoned. It seems mainly just the artists who have held onto the idea of craft, keenly aware of its importance to the soul — always inherently creative — and that it offers a deep sense of value and identity.
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What does it mean to be a man who has an artistic craft? For one thing, it requires the courage to step away from the mainstream and any old limiting ideas of masculinity. For another, it means having a sense of pride in who you are and what you create — especially if it’s unconventional.
As an author, my primary craft is writing rather than weaving. Yet working with the Navajo loom is not only a timeless metaphor for life, it offers a sensory meditation, a welcome respite from pushing words around on paper (or the computer screen). In yoga-speak, it’s a ‘counterpose’: flexing me into a different expression while stretching an opposing, counterbalancing group of muscles.
More than merely “craft,” this yarn weaves me as a man into the larger story in which we are all connected. It’s a thread to the soul of the world.
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Weaving on a hand loom is slow, detailed work, requiring one to be present in what he or she is doing. It suits me.
There is also something in weaving that I savor as a communion with place. The yarn I use comes from a sheep ranch near Taos, New Mexico that raises the heirloom Navajo-churro sheep whose wool is traditionally used in this sort of textile weaving. It’s purchased from a small shop in Arroyo Seco nearby, where they know the rancher and hand-dye all the yarn themselves.
Patiently laying in the ‘weft’ threads of natural colors and beating them down with a polished, wooden Navajo weaving fork held continuously in my hand, somehow connects me not only to craft but to earth itself. I know where this yarn came from. I have twice lived in northern New Mexico, and that wild, arid landscape of fragrant sagebrush beneath a wide turquoise sky still sings in my bones like an ancient chant.
More than “craft,” more than a respite from writing — and more than a social Friday night — this yarn weaves me as a man into the larger story in which we are all connected. It’s a thread to the soul of the world.
It is immeasurably worthy to have a craft and to be a unique individual outside the mainstream. Embrace it, I say.
Unconventional men and artists, unite. Let’s weave a new masculinity.
Also by L. R. Heartsong
And He Danced. Wildly. Naked | Embodying the Sacred Masculine | Evolution, Men, and Inspiration: Beating the One in A Million Chance | Meeting the Wild Falcon: 3 Reasons Why Nature is Essential for Men |
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Photo credit: Author