Dancin' With The Camel What Brung Me

Well, here it is, the camel confetti disaster. How did such an amazing batt become such a muddy, lumpy mess?

There’s an old saying about sticking with relationships…’Dance with the fella what brung ya to the dance’. I stuck with it. I danced and whirled and leapt and spun even though I could see it was headed toward disaster and someone would be crying when it was over. And in doing so, I learned. Oddly, I found the lessons surprisingly analogous to experiences I’ve had in interpersonal relationships in the last year. I learned that :

Look Before You Leap
Just because you CAN mix a whole bunch of fibers and glittery stuff into one batt, doesn’t mean you should. You should take pause and think it through before you just start blending.

Oil And Water Don’t Mix
Sometimes things that look good together on the surface just aren’t. If some of the fibers are slippery and some aren’t, things just aren’t going to go smoothly. It’s going to lump and bump along and end up as a reasonable facsimile of yarn, but it won’t be a healthy, robust skein you can be proud of.

All That Glitters Is Not Gold
All the glitz and shiny distractions can’t save the fact that the combination is doomed to fail. Anything with that much glitter and shine is overcompensating for something.

It Is What It Is
You can manipulate and spin and smooth and try your darndest and it may still fail. If both parties, the fiber and the spinner, don’ t cooperate, it’s going to go bust. It doesn’t make you, personally, a failure. The product failed.

Camel Batts Can Be Real Ass Hats
You love your camel batt. It’s soft and sweet and lovely. It looks perfect. It says all the right things. Then once you’ve been working with it a while, it’s dirty little secrets come out; guard hairs, burrs and snarls. Sometimes a camel can be a real ass and you don’t find out about it until it’s too late.

Sometimes The Best Part Is The End
Ok, so you danced with the camel what brought you. It was good. It was bad. It ended in disaster, but did it really? With so many lessons to be gleaned from the experience, it can’t be written off as a total flop. Next time you’ll know what to look for in a batt; Look past the pretty and the shiny, look at the core and see if it’s the same color as the outside and doesn’t have any big lumpy things that will impede the spinning process. Can they be combed out or should you just keep looking? Oh you’re still fond of your lumpy bumpy skein of camel ass yarn for what it was and is. It’s no longer useful for a project but it ‘s an invaluable primer for future spinning.