Musings on the Lint Cycle

It occurs to me as I am reviewing my weekend that I have had an extremely intense relationship going on with fabric for quite some time.

I know that I have been talking about sewing  quite a bit lately, evidence of an ongoing relationship with fabric.   My latest project has been a skirt made of silk neckties.

We were reading some of the activities planned for our trans-Atlantic crossing, and a Novelty Tie Contest is being planned.    We thought it might be fun to participate.  As we were shopping around on eBay for a suitably funky, colorful, vintage, or ugly tie for Jim, I was suddenly reminded of a skirt I made back in 1980 out of silk ties.

I’ll tell you, that skirt was a fabulous thing. The person who contributed the ties had a collection with wonderful fabrics and colors that I arranged into a veritable rainbow of a skirt.   I used to tell people that this was the only proper way to wear ties.   After all, a person has to be just a little bit nuts to voluntarily put a noose around his own neck, no matter how elegant or beautiful it is.   When I wasn’t telling them that, I would slyly inform them that it was my trophy skirt, and add (with a rather wicked smile) that there weren’t nearly enough ties in it.  (!)  That skirt had the most wonderful flow and drape, and I eventually wore it out.

Anyway, nostalgia for that skirt made me want another.  I had a short email conversation with one of the proprietors of an on-line emporium, and he sent me a selection of ties so I could create another garment.  Those ties arrived in Saturday’s mail, so I took them apart and pressed them and then put them together into a skirt.   This project took up most of Saturday and Sunday, with suitable breaks for nourishment of body, soul and relationship.  (Oh yes, and bird counting.   I did participate in the Backyard Bird Count.  No wonder the sunflower and niger seeds are disappearing at such a great rate.  There are dozens of birds out there freeloading off of us.)

The picture below is of the narrow ends of the ties spread out in a display on my ironing board.   These are the remnants of the skirt making, and are laid out in the order that they are sewn into the new skirt.   As I spent hours focused on the ties while sewing them together, I got a new appreciation for the amazing work of art that creating a beautiful necktie truly is.  

I mean, take a close look at the red tie with the blue boxes that is just left of center.    Narrow in on the jacquard weave that makes the background of the tie, and meditate for just a moment on how the fabric designer coordinated his geometric print with the idea of the boxes in the jacquard.

Okay, so maybe I have been looking at fabrics just a little too closely for the last couple of days.   Its just that my life seems to be one big piece of fabric after another.    In addition to sewing several skirts, I make my massage table up an average of four times a day, which requires spreading sheets over it.   I also have to launder those sheets, and fold them and put them away afterwards.

Sometimes I visualize the sheets on their travels through the house.   What would it look like if they floated through the air unaccompanied?    There would be phantom phalanxes of sheets flying from my cabinet onto the massage table.  During the hour of the massage, you would see them flipping around,  up and back to reveal an arm here, a leg there.   Slipping back down to cover the person, then floating up and back as the person leaves the table, dropping to the table in a crumpled mass.    Suddenly they would fly out of the room into the hamperin the hall.    Later the hamper lid opens and a mass of sheets floats down the hall, through the kitchen and into the laundry area, where they deposit themselves into the washing machine.   A couple of hours of tossing and turning later, they fall to rest in the bottom of the dryer, only to waft themselves into the living room where they flap wildly as they become subdued into neat packets, whereon they march back down the hall and come to rest in neat piles, back in the cabinet.    A constant, daily parade of fabric through my house.

As I take the sheets out of the dryer and clean the lint screen, I often look at the mass of soft fibers in my hand.    Suddenly I realize why my sheets progressively get thinner and thinner as they go through their daily travels up and down the hall.   I notice this gradual accumulation of thinness during the ministrations of the folding process.   Every time they get washed and dried, a little bit of their fiber comes loose and gets deposited in the lint screen.   

Eventually, the sheet will disappear into thin air one day.   Imagine the day I open the dryer to find nothing in there, just the last deposit of lint in the lint trap, a few threads tangled up in the bottom of the dryer.   

And where does that lint go?   Is it another cycle for us to study?   There are so many cycles in the world:   bicycles, unicycles, tricycles, the cycle of the year, hormonal cycles.    I have studied the water cycle, the Krebs cycle, the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle.   Why not the lint cycle?

Where does that fiber in my lint trap come from?   From what field of cotton, hemp, flax, bamboo?   From the back of what animal was it clipped?   Or what oil field was it pumped from,  if it is polyester or nylon (not much danger of THAT in this house!)   And when I am done with it in the form of sheets and socks and pants and shirts, where does it go?   Does it go into the trash, and from there to a landfill?   Or does it go into my compost bucket, to live for a while in my mulch pile.    There a carolina wren may appropriate it for a soft lining for her nest.   Or a mouse may take it home for some nice bedding.   Squirrels, finches, pack rats, voles, blue birds, cardinals — they all love the bits of fiber and lint they find around my back door.

Sometimes I get fascinated by the fiber of the earth as I gaze into the incredible architecture of some rock that a person has picked up because they heard it say it wanted to meet me.    One of my clients brought me one of those the other day.   Her husband, a long haul trucker, saw it someplace.   He can’t remember where he picked it up, but he knew it had to come live in my labyrinth.    What an amazing rock it is, too, although I have no idea what kind of rock it is.   I just love the veins and colors and crystals in it.

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I had a troll visit The Havens this week.   A person claiming to be a contractor read my post on wheelbarrows and left a rather snarky comment accusing me of being the kind of customer he hates, nothing but a nit picker.   After all, I got a brand new wheelbarrow out of the deal, what was my problem?   He warned me that contractors talk to each other, and if I am not careful I will not be able to get reasonable estimates for future work.  

I wonder if he thought two grand was a reasonable estimate for the water line work that was done here.   I didn’t think it was reasonable, but I needed to have my water line replaced.   I don’t know how long it takes him to put $2000 in his savings account, but that represents no small amount of hours of my life and I expect to get good value for my 66 life hours.    

I don’t suppose he is the sort of contractor who uses his customer’s tools and wrecks them, and then replaces the ruined high quality item with a piece of cheap crap.    At least I hope he isn’t.   I don’t think he read the other posts, or he would have known that my contractor friends thought the blundering plumbers needed to do a better job, it wasn’t just me nit picking.  Perhaps he would have been more charitable.   Maybe he just had a really rough week with a truly nitk-picking person.

I thought about replying to him, defending myself, justifying myself.  Then I realized I didn’t have to, that it’s okay.   After all was said and done, it was a very pleasant moment when I exercised my power as the owner and operator of this space and spammed that comment.   

I sort of feel like my mom.  If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all. 

Now, I need to retrieve my bedding off the clothesline where I left it to air in the chilly, breezy morning sun.  Take care now, hear?