SailingKnitter

I was knitting on my FLAK sweater last night and came across 2 small pieces of VM - vegetative matter in the yarn. I love these!! While carefully picking them out, I thought about the source of my yarn - those fluffy sheep wandering the hillsides. Yeah, I know...lots of folks consider VM to be a "fault" with the yarn - the yarn wasn't processed properly - or was quite dirty. And I know that quite possibly this VM had traveled the digestive track of the animal before becoming lodged in the fleece - to roving - to yarn - to me. Yet, I choose to picture the little lamb, exhausted after playing in the green fields, flopping down to rest under the bright blue sky with cotton ball white clouds. A tiny grass blade becomes entwined in his soft, white fleece. Many months later, that very same piece of VM is picked out of the yarn by me.

Remnents of a "high fiber diet" or evidence of the natural source of yarn - how you think about it is your choice.

Each morning as I drive to work along the 2-lane (high-speed dangerous) road through the foothills I see the large flocks of sheep & lambs munching away on the grass. Why do they always face in the same direction? Why do they slowly walk (in that same direction) as they eat? I think of them as "yarn on the hoof". It's that time of year now where the fields look brownish gray, but if you look closely you can see the new grass shoots growing up in the bare spots around the old last year's stalks. My husband calls sheep "land maggots" because they look like large maggots and have the intelligence of maggots. I just see yarn, miles and miles of yarn.