So many of the items around us every day are the end result of such complicated production chains that they might as well be produced by Tolkienesque wizards or Star Trek replicators. It's easy to forget that only a generation or two ago, not everything in life could be ordered from Amazon literally with the push of a button. Now, I definitely appreciate the convenience, variety, and efficiency of the modern world, but it sometimes starts to feel a little unreal to me, and I worry about the effect it has on my children, too. Consequently, the GeekWife and I make an effort to have the kids get as much experience as possible doing and making things themselves. A recent opportunity for such learning presented itself when my wife managed to get her hands on a couple of bags of sheep fleece.
The GeekWife has been an enthusiastic knitter for decades, but it's only lately that she has become interested in the process of wool production. This interest was purely abstract until she attended a spinning seminar a few weeks ago, and then discovered that a friend of the family raised sheep. The result was predictable, and our bathtub is now given over to some retro science and engineering as the GeekWife figures out how to clean and process the raw fleece with the resources available to her. (I asked, and no, building an Arduino-controlled Lego robot to do the work is not allowed.)
I've been informed that the first step in processing the raw fleece is to wash it in order to remove much of the natural oil and other organic "guck." After that, there are a few more steps (picking, carding, roving) before the wool is ready to spin into yarn. The GeekWife still needs to work out those steps, but once that's done, she'll be on to something a lot more interesting, as shown in the video below:
As you can see, my wife has managed to get at least one of the kids interested in her project, so she gets plenty of points for Parenting Success. And I have to admit that I am impressed to see how do-able the whole process is. Yes, it's a lot of tedious work, but it's empowering to know that we humans can do something like this, and that we're not wholly dependent on computers and machines for everything in our lives.
Sure, the virtual and digital world of the 21st Century is wonderful in many ways, but I think we could all use a little time creating and experiencing real things, too. Feel free to jump into the comments below with your parenting thoughts, too.
