Fiber fascinates.

It obsesses. It creates its own universe and sucks us in like an endlessly colorful black hole. It attracts us with myriad textures, hues, patterns, and possibilities. Those of us that are attracted to it usually remain in love with it our entire lives, sometimes faithful to one fiber-related craft, sometimes moving through the gamut of needle arts and related crafts over a lifetime.

Fiber presents itself to us in endless variety. Fabric tempts the quilter and seamstress to combine pieces in innumerable combinations, with the additional interest of dying, pleating, embroidering, and embellishing. Yarn creates its own fabric as you go, whether knitting or weaving, and can be sculpted into felted shapes as well. Even beads of glass or polymer clay are distant cousins to fiber, and they enjoy visiting from time to time.

Over the years I've played with all of these, starting with clothing for troll dolls and elbow macaroni on ribbon, and arriving at a place where the materials sometimes ooze over the boundaries and wander into sketches and ideas, and become reality when I pull things off the shelves and out of the cupboards, and start assembling them on the table.

While I don't make a living at my passion for fiber, I enjoy the way it fills the nooks and crannies of my life, I enjoy my job as a librarian equally well, and I enjoy my life as a mom to one teenager and two cats. They all ooze over those boundaries we so humanly set, they assist and comment and interfere and I love it all.

It all fascinates, but particularly fiber.