I’ve once again fallen behind on my weekly posts. I think living through a pandemic is finally catch up to me and my mental health is taking a hit. It’s hard to focus on school when the world is…well, what it is right now. Nevertheless, I will do my best to get things done in regards to school. It’s also difficult to complete these posts because what I have spent most of my time for the last two weeks doing is spinning. Looking back at my log, for week four I spent over twenty hours spinning and less than seven hours doing non-fiber related things. Of course, I can talk about what I did in those seven hours, but I’m unsure what else I can talk about when it comes to spinning (except for the random trains of thought I have when spinning. Spinning gives you time to think). Or perhaps I’m being very negative right now because of depression.
In week four, I caught up with updating this ePortfolio with my weekly summaries for weeks two and three. I hadn’t realized I had fallen behind; it’s hard for me to keep track of time these days. It was good to get that done. I was also finally able to pick up the library book I requested through Interlibrary Loan! That was exciting.
Hilariously, the chapter I wanted to read wasn’t quite what I thought it was, but it was still utterly interesting to me. The chapter, “Women’s Work: Spinning and Weaving in the Greek Home,” by K. Carr talked about the logistics of how much cloth a family could produce in one year if only the women in the household were doing the work. It also discussed a bit on how women were viewed in Greek society; it was almost as if they were dangerous and liminal creatures who needed to be watched at all times and kept very busy. The ideal of femininity was a woman who was industrious and skilled in spinning and weaving…except that it could be argued that those activities were also “dangerous”. There are at least a couple of instances in Greek mythology and lore where a woven textile was a dangerous weapon, and spinning was associated with the Moirai – the Fates, which suggests that spinning, in some subconscious way, was not seen as just a harmless activity.
Also, in preparation of starting research into natural dyes that were used in Archaic and Classical Greece, I contacted the owner of a Facebook group who has spent twelve years researching and experimenting with the pigment found in Murex sea snails (though the main species of snails used for dye are no longer categorized in the genus Murex anymore, they are still in the Murex family). The glands of snails in the Murex family are the source of the famous Tyrian, or Phoenician, purple dye used in ancient times, but there is evidence that Murex has been used for purple dye in the Aegean since the time of the Minoans . Anyways, the person sells kits comprised of two or three shells, a dried gland, some small samples of fiber and fabric he’s dyed, and some of the pigment itself. The pigment is expensive – a company, Kremer, sells it for about $2,600 a gram. The person I talked to sells it for about half. I only bought the tiniest of amounts – 0.2 grams – mostly just to have it and share it here! I wasn’t planning to spend much time devoted to Murex purple – I’m more interested in dyes that the average person could obtain – but I also couldn’t pass up actually having samples of the stuff for my very own.