Carding Party

Yesterday my imma (host mother) told me to come over and help with making lunch, because she was having women over to “karshnt,” or card and spin wool. It occurs to me that stuff like this doesn’t often happen any more in the States. That is, have a community gathering to make light work of a tedious and difficult but necessary job that must be done. We do this type of thing often here.

Today at 9 am I walked into my imma’s kitchen, a long and wide room on the top level with three wood posts holding up the roof. The cement floor is half covered with rugs and mats surrounded by low wooden seats. Today 8 women have already taken seats on those mats. They have been at work for a while: there is a huge pile of fluffy white wool on the floor in between them, but there are also many stacks of carded wool next to each women. A couple women have begun the process of spinning. They use a hand-spindle, and turn the carded wool into loosely spun yarn. It’s sits piled next to them, a huge, long discarded snake skin of wool. The raw wool look like a tiny patch of fog took up residence on the floor in between them. I have to repress an irrational urge to jump into it like a child jumping into a pile of leaves. I go around the room and greet each woman personally, as is expected. I opt for the shaking hands variety because kissing people’s cheeks is tedious when they are all sitting cross-legged on the floor.

A few minutes later I’m sitting on a short stool, with about 2 kg of fool in front of me. Ever had fool? It’s tasty. Big long green-beans with soft foam-like skin, seeds the size of a largish fingernail and tough strings running down either side. Each bean-seed has to be checked for damage from bugs, and the strings come off, too. After that, it’s the carrots, then the potatoes. My imma likes the carrots de-cored. I don’t particularly like de-coring carrots, but I can do it now. I realize my wrist is going to be sore after all this veggie prep!

Ever watch carding and spinning by hand? Each person has their own rhythm, their hands never staying still… the wool going from little fog-patch to snagged on the carding paddles, then scrrratch—scrrrratch it is combed and pulled into line and turned and returned until it’s smooth and in little rectangles. Piles of the rectangles grow and are taken to the women spinning. They take two, catch the edge of them on the spindle and give it a few twists, then tug and twist, tug-tug-tug-tug and twist again until the wool stretches out, growing and twisting as it falls by their sides in tangley looking piles. Then they wrap it around arms and pull it through into a big knot with a twist of the wrist.

To pass the time the women start singing. They’re clever, making up songs about life on the spot, and they teach them to each other in a call-and-response style. Thus, the leader who made up the song teaches everyone else a refrain and then puts in little verses once they’ve got it. It’s cool. The tune is usually the same, and it’s as twisty and turny as the wool. Middling high pitched, it’s sweet and they love it. They sing until their voices get scratchy. The carding makes a low, rough counterpoint, and I add the soft popping noise of fool being broken into halves and quarters and eighths as I prep it. They sing about marriage, about cooking and what fuel they cook with, and then my host mother decides to sing about me to embarrass me. They laugh and we keep going. I wish I could sing with them but I can just barely catch the meaning… the words flow by to quickly for me to raise my voice. I finish before they do, and help set up the mid-morning snack. They put a little round table over the fog-patch of wool and eat up. Then they get back to it. Scrrrrrratch—scrrrrrrratch!