she went to sea in a sieve

in which Sarah savors words and impossible things

So you know these lacy knitted vessels of light and air that I’ve been making? Well it turns out I was mistaken in my nomenclature. They do not want to be called vessels. They want to be known as bowls.

Well that’s fine. I mean bowl is a satisfying word and its letters are fun to weave so I was happy to add the word to the box that houses my slow-growing collection of four letter single syllable nouns.

bowl; hand woven tapestry (in progress); hand spun wool warp and letters, linen paper ground weft; indigo 3” x 5”

It actually has as name, this box of words: the 99 Noun Project, and it began when I wove the word dark as we headed into December 2021. Since then each additional word has had some relevance to my state of mind—each naming a thing I wanted to think about or pay closer attention too, each inducing a kind of noticing I am trying to cultivate.

In the beginning it was easy to recite the words in the order of their creation, though eventually I lost track of that, and organized them by color.

Now there are 68 tapestry words and another ten stitched on paper,¹ so I store them in a cardboard box organized alphabetically like a library card file for easy retrieval.

And retrieve them I do. Fringeless and clean-backed² the tapestry ones are as each to handle as the paper--a delight to arrange and re-arrange as the moment dictates.

Incantations, it turns out, are irresistible.

So too are unexpected basic truths — about life, infants, and the innate structure of letters.

The backs of my embroidered words are not as tidy as the backs of the tapestries, but reverse chain stitch is still perfectly readable and since I painted both sides of the card I stitched on, the poop/boob flip could have been deliberate—though truthfully the surprise of noticing and guffawing with the brand new parents (and anyone who has ever nursed a baby), was too delicious to miss.

But wait. How did I get to talking about baby poop? I do apologize. My friend Robin says when you start to talk about your bowels it is time to go home—but maybe instead I’ll try to get back to the point, which now that I think of it, just means I need only to remove the e from bowels—

milkweed bowl, 1” x 1” x 2.5”????

—and we’re back to weaveable, one-syllable four letter words that begin with the letter b. So far I have six: bowl and bast as you see above, as well as bear, bark, bone, and blue. Of course that is nothing compared with the w words (there are twelve in the box —and I haven’t even woven word, weld or woad). But now that I have bowl, I’m thinking about boat.

Why boat?

Because in making the shift from vessel to bowl, I happened to pause in the gusset between the two and catch a glimpse of that boat-of-all-dreamboats, the coracle.

Now as long time readers might know, I've got a thing for coracles. These tiny vessel/bowls are, indeed, my favorite floating-objects-of-transport of all time. Since my son and I built one when he was about 10 they have appeared in tapestries and blog posts,³ in daydreams and drawings, and since coracles are essentially keel-less floating bowls perfect for exploring shallow streams and slow moving channels in a partiuarly pleasurable meandering way rather like my sentences and ideas (and truth to tell in case you hadn’t noticed pretty much everything I do), whenever I see a pond, puddle or meandery backwater-- real or imaginary-- I have an irrepressible urge to embark.

Which makes it unsurprising that this morning on my early jaunt to a pocket park where I go regularly for a moment or two or ten (depending on the time and temperature)— to listen to geese and ducks and song birds and whoever else is awake, and to hang out with dead tree friends and get slapped at by the tail one of the resident beavers— what should I see floating down the creek toward me but my wild twin⁴ in the impossible boat of my dreams.

So I trotted home, put on my rose colored glasses, and joined her.

How not—even in winter without a sweater.

to sea in a sieve; digital drawing; photograph, bowl, used coffee filters, dream.

And that is where you find me now, having written and drawn myself deep into a daydreamy digital gusset where I’ve believed six impossible things before breakfast and written nothing at all of what I planned when I embarked on this note. But now that perhaps you are beyond ready to embark on your own daily adventure, I’ll step ashore to heat some water for Oolong⁵, and leave you with a fragment of a poem.

The Jumblies⁶.

They went to sea in a Sieve, they did,

   In a Sieve they went to sea:

In spite of all their friends could say,

On a winter’s morn, on a stormy day,

   In a Sieve they went to sea!

And when the Sieve turned round and round,

And every one cried, ‘You’ll all be drowned!’

They called aloud, ‘Our Sieve ain’t big,

But we don’t care a button! we don’t care a fig!

   In a Sieve we’ll go to sea!’

      Far and few, far and few,

         Are the lands where the Jumblies live;

      Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,

         And they went to sea in a Sieve.

1. I was away from home and without a loom for a month in January when my granddaughter was born so when words showed up I had to figure out a way to write them with the materials at hand.

2. Fringeless is the name of the Four Selvedge Tapestry class I teach with Rebecca Mezoff at her online tapestry school. Tucking the Tails is a guide I wrote about securely working in the ends as you weave a tapestry for a back as smooth as the front.

3. Here’s a page with two coracle tapestries, and if you type the word coracle into the search bar anywhere on my website there are several more references. Also google has some fun coracle sites if you want a rabbit hole or two

4. Courting the Wild Twin by Martin Shaw

5. Geez I love these footnotes! All the fun links in one place. Anyway, just a plug for my new exquisite fave —especially exciting as for a while I’ve been a touch too nervy to drink Camellia sinensis leaves but, in part thanks to being back with all of you, can now savor the odd wee cup once again). No commercial commotion other than long and delicious sipping pleasure. Also crazy for their chrysanthemum.

6. The Jumblies by Edward Lear; click the link for the rest of the story as I’ve only quoted the first stanza. Also note that the Jumblies have blue hands so perhaps they are indigo dyers? There are also references through the ages to witches who go to sea in sieves, and apparently it is proof positive that they are terrifying and powerful which rather ignores the to me obvious companion notion that going to sea in a sieve is a sign of imagination, emotional buoyancy and essential joie de vive. Sieves are also mentioned by the witches in Macbeth. In my brief exploration however, no one except the Jumblies seems to think any of it a good idea so I haven’t quoted them. Please do some research if you’re curious though, and let me know if you find something delicious.