12 June 2012

Balls of words

The cone of one-ply wool, £1 at a charity shop, gives me something to do while watching tv at the weekend - finger crocheting, and winding it into a ball. It's the red thread of connectivity - can it connect words, thoughts?
And once you have words buried in the net of threads, isn't that like having them trapped in your brain, unable to retrieve them? What other materials can be used for the net -- and what should the words be, long uncommon ones, or the short ones that glue sentences and meaning together?
 I used the standfirsts and pull-quotes from the newspaper (larger type!) and cut them into single words and short phrases. The intransigent ball of lively fishing line is hard to keep from unravelling, throwing out a shower of short words as it leaps from your hand.

The long words are tied up with old rayon thread, from spools that are dusty and dull on the outside but become ever more gleaming on unwinding, parts that have been protected over the years and are finally seeing light of day -
only to be hidden again among the words that they are keeping hidden.

1 comment:

jeanne hewell-chambers said...

oh how i do love this! for years, i've been wrapping old spools of thread (spools of old thread?) around various and sundry items . . . like jars and candles and rocks and books. never know why, just seemed like a good idea at the time. it comforts me somehow - i guess the hands in motion and the brainless activity. maybe i'll ball up some of the words that rattle around inside me - dump them out then wrap them up. see if that won't leave space for new ones to grow . . .