Sloth

An engraving made by Abraham Bosse -
a French artist and etcher. Here we see a rather
cavalier looking gentleman and a lazy ass.

Sloth marks the mid-point in my series of Seven Deadly Yarns and I feel like I'm fighting a touch of apathy; kind of appropriate really, since many mediaeval sources list 'acedia' in place of the more modern terminology. 

Acedia alludes more to the spiritual/emotional side of things - the unceasing Aquinas goes so far as to suggest that acedia is a precursor to other mental instabilities such as restlessness and instability (was there anything other than prayer that the man didn't believe was sinful?) Furthermore, lack of doing something that one was supposed to do was also an act of acedia. This is certainly one easy sin to fall into!

By the time Dante got around to writing Purgatorio--the sequel to the Inferno, and precursor to Paradiso--in the early fourteenth century ideas were changing. It's interesting to see that in Dante's view the slothful are found in purgatory (a place of punishment, not as severe as hell, are sent for a time to atone for their wrongdoings) rather than in the depths of the inferno. Here the souls who were lacking in activity in life are engaged in ceaseless toil, they dash about in a hive of activity...no doubt after which they will be thankful for a good rest.

I already have a fairly clear idea of the end product for my fibery homage to sloth, though that may evolve a little as I go, so more on that next time...now to go and have a pause for thought and collect some more ideas.

The Fourth Circle

Here are the results of my foray into Greed, a creation of soft merino in golden shades (they remind me of goldfish), glittery golden embroidery thread, sequins and just a sprinkle of tinsel. I'm quite pleased with it though I'm sure it could have dripped with more bling!

Sequins and sparkles!

The dragon's treasure or is it a pirate's?

The skein, awaiting its final destiny.

Lay Not Up For Yourselves Treasures

 'Can you hear it ring

It makes you wanna sing

It's such a beautiful thing--Ka-ching!

Lots of diamond rings

The happiness it brings

You'll live like a king

With lots of money and things..'

-- Shania Twain 'Ka-Ching'

Gathering supplies for the finished yarn - dyed merino tops,
sparkly stuff, gold sequins and embroidery thread.

I knew even before the first post for the Greed yarn that the predominant colour for it would have to be golden shades and that there'd have to be a lot of different sparkly stuff in there. I also had a pretty good idea of what the end result was going to look like as well, though the idea did undergo some evolution as I went; the beads that I'd originally imagined turned into shiny, sparkly, coin-like sequins.

Having chosen three different shades of ready dyed fleece (ranging from a sort of maize-like yellow to a coppery-orange) I knew that I wanted to blend them together, to avoid the kind of barber's pole effect that'd been present in the previous yarns I've made for this project. Out came the carding combs! In theory it's simple, fibres go onto the face of the brushes and out of the chaos comes a nice order that can be turned into a rolag. I'm sure there's a knack that I've not yet found out about, something simple that I've been missing. It wasn't as plain sailing as it should have been. The idea is to end up with all of the fibres on one of the carders, so that the fluff can be neatly rolled into a rolag...which I did end up with in the end (though I do feel the need to say that I could spin with the somewhat messy rolags I'd made to date). 

One half of my carders, loaded up with
merino and gold sparkles.

Once the rolags were made they were pretty easy to spin from and I can certainly see the appeal of a blending board (next husband construction project)! The embroidery thread worked out nicely too as a carrier for the sequins - the hardest part with that was avoiding the very fine thread tangling up (mostly by twisting back on itself). I only made a small sample before cracking on with the final skein, though I did add some bits of very sparkly tinsel that weren't part of the plan. 

A couple of the better looking rolags.

At some point I also realised that I'd gotten behind with this blog but hey-ho, on with it now even though the accompanying artwork's not finished and the 'finished' skein just needs the twist setting.