The Pandemic Blanket Series

The Pandemic Blanket Series


After the nine eleven attacks that rocked and shocked the world, I did a series of blankets: security blankets, medicine blankets, and love blankets. It has been many years since I made a blanket, but during the Covid isolation period, I found myself once again, interested in blankets. As we all quarantined and cocooned, I begin to crave the soft enfolding comfort of the gentle and warm hand woven wool blanket.

This year I have been in love with the Shetland breed of sheep. If you have seen one Shetland sheep, one fleece, as they say, well, you have seen one Shetland! The Shetland is an primitive breed, small in size, and big in personality. They are very pet like. They apparently came in more colors and patterns than any other breed. 

As with many primitive breeds, they are not suited to factory use because of the lack of uniformity, and this is one of the reasons they are particularly endearing to me. Some have a double coat, with a soft downy undercoat, as well as the stronger guard hairs; others have a single coat. 


There is a wide variety of types of fur on the different parts of the fleece as well, with some soft or coarse, and some long or short, plus color variations. The color will even transform from one season to another. All, on a single sheep!


 I spin one amazing fleece in which you can clearly see the lamb was born dark blue gray, but then turned white: the first inch next to skin was dark, then changes abruptly to white! At shearing time, this one would have appeared dark on the outside, but was white under that! I learn that this is the trait from which the original tweeds were made.

Some roo: the coat comes off all by itself in the spring, either it falls off in pieces, or all at once with a little brushing or combing. This makes a very soft yarn, as there are no cut edges on the hairs. 




So, as the shows and fairs begin to be cancelled due to the pandemic, I begin to look to online sources for raw fleeces to spin. First I call a Shetland sheep farmer I know in my own neighborhood.  I visit her farm and buy five beautiful Shetland fleeces. Each one is so unique. I am intrigued. Most spin right off the locks, with no need to card it first. The fleeces of a Shetland tend to be small, often, only a pound or two. It is usually not very heavy with lanolin, though.




I also find some heritage Shetland fleeces in the land where my ancestry DNA test reveals some of my ancestors are from. Packages arrive by mail from Northern Europe. So exciting!


It turns out that due to importation restrictions, Shetland sheep can’t just trot onto a plane or boat and move into a farm in the US. Breeders must go to Europe get some semen from a Shetland, and then back breed, for several generations, to the Shetland, by successive mixing with some other breed off sheep that are already here. This fact has led to some interesting diversity that has been introduced to the Shetland name here in the States. It is no wonder they are considered pretty much a different breed from the European strains. 

So as I buy online, I find a very wide variety of traits in the fleeces. Some are curly, some are straight, some very soft, others not so much. My favorite ones lately have been ones that have little ringlets so tight you could curl one around a toothpick. I spin these in a way that keeps the ringlets and features them.


The yarn I spin is loose and fluffy; “woolen” style. I weave squares on a CinDWood potholder style loom; diagonal pattern, not square. The results are loose and fluffy. 

Soon I have piles and heaps of squares. The blankets require many, many squares, depending on the size of the squares. I join the larger squares together by pulling the side loops together into one another. This method requires no extra yarn, but does add a little bit of warping, as the squares tighten at the join. 
I join the smaller squares by actually sewing them together with external matching yarn, using a figure 8 shaped stitch.

I dye over both the dark and light fleece colors. The colors I dye over white are bright and pure. Some of these, I dye lightly, to produce pastel colors. With the naturally dark fleeces, of course, the colors come out in darker shades, and with less dye, the duller shades.

Next it is time for my color compositions. This is the really fun part. Every creative production is, as they say, ninetynine percent perspiration, and one percent inspiration. This would be the inspiration part. 

The first six blankets are monochromatic. Controlling the color is tough. I am so tempted to add more colors, to go full rainbow, even! But I hold my fire. Between the many shades and pure colors and pastels, plus the whites, grays and blacks, there is plenty enough diversity to work with.




But finally, on blanket seven, I can’t hold back any longer:







Phases of Covid Social Reorientation

Phases of Covid Social Reorientation

Covid has put us all, and the whole world’s social landscape through transformational change. 

In the beginning, it was a call to arms. All can help; in the effort to save us all. Stop everything, for a little while, so we can flatten the curve of exponential transmission, in that moment when we know very little about the virus, and have no known medicines, treatments, tests, or vaccinations for it. 

It is a phase of pulling inward, stopping our regular habits and patterns, even spending time alone. A moment of being alone. Together. 

Even the overworked medical heroes isolate behind their wall of protective gear.

Getting to know ourselves, going within, feeling who we really are. A real pattern-interrupt.

Many of us notice, during this phase, our possession of the shared wealth of abundant resources and systems that permit such a complete halt of business as usual. It is a teachable moment and an object lesson that, if we can change so suddenly, we can also change other things suddenly too, such a carbon pollution causing global climate catastrophe.

Next comes the phase in which people begin to form pods, little isolated groups of relative safety, from which members cannot venture out without involving the others in the pod in their business. It is, perhaps, a rudimentary recapitulation of the early stages of civilization, from the cave to the small tribal band.

We begin to discover new ways to work, new ways to get food and supplies. New ways to meet.

When supplies get ramped up and become available, the mask appears. 

All the while, social media is playing in the background, as we all think these things through together. 

The mask becomes an item of fashion, but also now, it is starting to be a sign of social separation and signaling. 

The mask is a new wall of separation, both physical and symbolic. Isolation compounded by viral, often untrue gossip, sometimes outright disinformation, enhanced by strengthened tribal impulses, gives rise to contentions, suspicions, even hostility. That feeling of we are all in this together dissolves. 

The next phase reaches a peak of this separation and social fragmentation as the vaccines roll out. So much fear and suspicion swirl around, especially in the amplified environment of the social media, that two distinct sides form.  

When a family member dies, people get emotional. Death stalks around, cultivating fear-obscured thinking.

The Rationals can see that if we all would just use the tools we have, those that are obviously scientifically sound, we can stop the pandemic and all will benefit. 

How can anyone endanger us all by going around unvaccinated? Put on a mask, or you are saying you don’t care about others. You could kill someone without even meaning to. How selfish!

But the Sovereigns are not on board. Trust is shaken. You wonder what is true. The Sovereigns suspect a plot to take away their freedom, their choice, their body autonomy.

Covid theater arises. The science is constantly changing. The Rationals wear their masks as a badge just to set an example for others, even at times and places when a mask is not really needed. The Sovereigns hold mask burnings; flouting the latest Covid transmission data by accusing the scientists of changing their story, thus proving that they can’t be trusted, even though it is the very nature of scientific information to shift as more is known and shared, and it is the nature of viruses to mutate.

But truly, both sides are actually pro social at heart. The Rationals simply know what is right for the best outcome for us all. The Sovereigns’ highest value is belonging to their tribe and adhering to its beliefs, even if it kills them. The Rationals are arrogant; the Sovereigns are paranoid. Both feel the pressure to conform to the position of their side. This phase can be likened to a Cold War, in which the sides retreat into their camps and armor up in defense of their respective positions. The tribes became nations, nations polarized into two opposing ends with irreconcilable differences .

The phase we are in now has all of these hardened positions beginning to soften and become fragmented. The Rationals know now that the vaccines have limitations. If they are paying attention, they will also know that big pharma has manipulated the pandemic for its own profit and in many cases at the expense of many people’s lives as they suppressed the efficacy of treatments and and safe medicines that were cheap and available “off label” in order to develop expensive alternatives that were patentable. They also realize, if they are being honest with themselves, that some people do just fine skipping vaccinations and treating or even preventing infection naturally and with wholistic methods. 

The Sovereigns have been outrun by the virus, and have, in many cases, suffered the personal consequences of mindless adherence to group beliefs. Even the young, healthy ones who have had a mild or even an aysymtomatic case of Covid know someone who was not so lucky.

Both sides have been traumatized by the fight. The Sovereigns have been hit with accusations of selfishness and uncaring, leading to the great humiliation of being shunned. The Rationals have been crushed to find out what these people in their lives on the other side really think; how they could behave so foolishly and disappointingly.

Now we do have many more tools with which to mend covid ravaged bodies. We have more knowledge, diagnostic tests, treatments, and better vaccination techniques than in the earlier phases. But we still do not have enough information and knowledge about which individuals may be personally vulnerable, and who is not really in danger. Nor do we know which direction the virus will mutate next. So it is not over. But it is slowly diminishing, like a season changing.

In the current phase, an uneasy truce is slowly giving way to reconciliation. The world is shaken. The civilization of the world is awakening into a new phase. People everywhere are craving so called normal. We will not go back to how we were before; for we are now, Experienced. Are we wiser?

Socially I have noticed one unifying and healing trend common to all: we now value the ability to be together in social community in our many favorite forms. Burned by the schism, we are also trying to reach out and mend the rift caused by the fight.

I had hoped in the beginning that the shared experience of the pandemic would open minds and increase cooperation and compassion. But fear has a way of contracting minds, and shrinking the capacity for care and rational thinking. Sadly, many are simply going back to the old ways of living, ignoring the innovations and realizations gifted to us by the crisis. Like pigging out on comfort food after a trauma, it is understandable, if not healthy. Some countries and tribes have gone right back to the old wars and rivalries, taking up right where they left off.

After living for so long down in the cellar of our fight or flight brain, higher thinking and reason have taken a hit and are in retreat. Confusion is thriving, exacerbated by deep fakes and other internet accelerants.

Fear is the opposite of love. The heart will need time to recover from this long phase of contraction. 

But I hope we stay awake and remember what we learned: we like playing with our friends, we are all in this together, everyone deserves compassion, and change, even dramatic overnight change, is possible. IF we want it.