April — month of Arbor Day, Earth Day, green grass growing!  For fiber inspiration we offer a few thoughts from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman:

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars

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A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any
more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green
stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may
see and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the
vegetation.

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Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you,
You must travel it for yourself.

It is not far, it is within reach,
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born and did not
know,
Perhaps it is everywhere on water and on land.

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I have said that the soul is not more than the body,
And I have said that the body is not more than the soul,
And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s self is,
And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own
funeral drest in his shroud,
And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the
earth,
And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds
the learning of all times,
And there is no trade or employment but the young man following
it may become a hero,
And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel’d
universe,
And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and
composed before a million universes.

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Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sun-rise would kill me,
If I could not now and always send sun-rise out of me.

– excerpts from Leaves of Grass  (1855)
More here:  http://www.whitmanarchive.org/

Painting of Whitman by Miguel Tio.  More information here:
http://library.ccsu.edu/about/exhibits/whitman/portrait.htm

Walt Whitman was born in 1819 in a busy port community on Long Island’s North Shore.  At the age of 19 he founded a newspaper there, whose press printed the first edition of “Leaves of Grass” with type set by Whitman’s own hands.  Many commentators believe the book to embody a perspective gained from “spontaneous enlightenment”, which helped him to see as if through the eyes of others.  His “free verse” offers deep belief in the value of a country, a people, a land, far beyond the monetary, a vision of fresh hope waiting to be discovered.

(Nyle here).   I first read Whitman at age 22, in a tree house.  Actually it was just a platform suspended by rope, surrounding the trunk without touching it, as if there by magnetic levitation.  I built the platform with hand tools in a series of fresh Iowa mornings, released from night shift in the dog food factory at dawn and unable to sleep.  The host was a giant old elm that rocked like a sailing ship in each gust.  The movement always reminded me that the tree was alive, a creature of air, precipitated out of atmospheric carbon through the intermediation of sunlight.

One day after reading Whitman I tried standing on my head in the grass at the base of the tree, using the trunk for a prop.  The perspective opened onto the world of bugs that live near the ground, a fascinating universe, always there but never noticed.  After that I refused to mow the lawn.

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Knit or crocheted fabric grows much like leaves of grass, in successive cells that appear  magically from empty space.  So simple to create, yet in doing so one joins with all Creation.

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The “Leaves of Grass” sampler from our new Yarntasting Cafe includes 6 swatching samples in Spring/garden colors/textures, 15 yards each, 90 yards total.  The price is $10 US ppd (add $5 for international postage).  To order just send an email to yarn@artfibers.com — we’ll bill you!

The full Artfibers yarn collection is at www.artfibers.com

Tags: leaves of grass, sampler, yarntasting cafe

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