YARN
Once you pull the thread of yarn out of the skein, your singular journey begins, looping yarn over, pulling yarn through, increasing by two, decreasing by one, finishing off that direction, attaching a new color, chaining, increasing, doubling, tripling . . . .
When does your yarn begin?
In the enchanted sweets of children’s books? In the variegated family
history of the knitting mills in Lancashire, England? Or Camden, New Jersey?
How does the yarn loop inside itself between the rosy fingers of the grandmother
and her older sister who used to sit beside the front bay window in the muting
grey twilight embracing Princess Avenue?
When do you change color?
When your suburban mother chains the red, white and blue hat to match the poncho
you asked for? When she pulls on through that first golden job outside the home
at a yarn shop in Naples, Florida? Or when you open your own color-filled yarn
shop on the corner of Camac and Pine hooking elusive financing, bashful customers,
bawdy instructors and your live-in psychologist?
When is the yarn over?