A walking reflection After heavy wind and rain Skeletal trees Mirrored in small ponding. As I was taking photos… There was that nice looking couple who stopped And the gentleman (humorously) asked if I was looking for places To bury a body in the bog, hmmm (funny face) There was an air of joyous sharing during this few hours of walking sunshine between two windy hydroponic events this week, a smile shared with each passing walker, each of us glad to be out in nature for our daily cleansing.
on my return walk, a woman was sitting on the far bench by Turtle Pond drawing with deep concentration, she did not notice as i approached her bench and startled when I got close enough to see that she was drawing, in detail, the dead Thistle Heads at the pond edge. She put her drawing down in a kind of shyness. I told her, her drawing was very good, then proceeded to tell her I have a friend who knits, who told me that thistle heads were once used during weaving, the process is called Teasing. She responded that it made sense, and i continued my walk.
Teasing is an age old technique; the practice of which we can trace back to the ancient Egyptians. This process creates different levels of dense fluff on the fabric, this fluff serves to make the fabric softer and warmer. Obviously the denser the fluff the warmer the fabric! In fact, this procedure increases the amount of air trapped between the fibers consequently forming a thermal insulation. In past times they used the dried flowers from the thistle plants, put in a straight lines until they formed a kind of brush with which they used to stroke the fabric. from: https://www.viscontidiangera.com/en/2019/09/13/teasing/
