The most beautiful thing is fibres. The second most beautiful thing is fibres meeting.

I laid the leaves out and wove them quickly on the bench in the chilly September air. I was in a conversation with a stranger and a friend while doing so.
“Look!” I yelled.
We were both daytime-drinking, sharing vodka from a small cup, fingers freezing.
“This is the most perfect thing! Can you see it? Can you see how it’s fullfilled, just like this? Can you see the colours?” I went on pointing, stabbing at the leaves with my finger. I was so excited.
“And do you know what else makes it perfect?”
With one quick, druken-fumbly motion, I untangled the leaves and sent them flying over the edge of the bench.
“Just like that, it is undone! It’s like it never was! But we know it was. We saw it and it was beautiful!”

(Drunk philosophizing is the best thing.)

I have been very fascinated by baskets and basket making for the past few years. I haven’t had much time to practicing the craft and so my baskets take on all sorts of weird and wonky shapes. But I love them for that and I love trying new techniques, fitting the new movements into my hands. The baskets make me.

Throughout this journey I have made baskets from pine needles, sisal rope, coconut fibres and plastic. I have found time to spin flax, a fibre very dear to me, and I have made tiny macramé pieces which I’ve sold or gifted. In Moçambique, I was lucky to get a lesson from a local weaver in making woven furniture out of a variety of palm leaves. Once I start, my hands get greedy and I find it hard to put the project down to rest.

All of the pieces have a little bit of magic in them.

There’s also something about fibres that tickles me in an existential way, besides the pure pleasure of crafting with them.

It’s like, a fibre is a perfect metaphor for time as it is the shape we often like to imagine it: linear. Yet the fibre twists and bends, unites with others and rips, knots itself back together and weaves into complex, three-dimensional structures with countless others.

I see life like this, I see relationships like this, I see everything like this: with knots, frictions and smooth woven patches covering up worn holes, stitched by anonymous, loving hands. Fibres and linearities that meet, intertwine and grow together, inseparable. Then bend and fold, just like a patchwork fabric.

And so when I am weaving, spinning, tying or sewing, I feel like I am doing more than making an object. I am making sense, I am making life. My hands are making a metaphor and my thoughts and experiences align and take place in the mesh of fibres. They rest.

…

(This story told in pictures, part one and two.)