Auction #8: Valentines Falls Away Like Memories

When I read Shira’s story “Valentines” the image that immediately struck me was at the end, with the paper flying around the room in snowy drifts. I wanted to find a way to keep the protagonist’s observations together for her, and because I tend to think in fiber, yarn suggested itself to me. The more I thought about it the more I realized that this yarn had three sections, one for each of the Valentines, and from there I saw that the foods eaten at each place could be represented by the colors of the fiber. I gathered several different types of fiber, shredded several copies of the story, and carded them all together on a borrowed drum carder. I also hand wrote several of the lines from the notebook in the story and worked out how to spin these lengths of paper into and around the yarn. In a strange bit of synchronicity, the paper I chose for this piece of the yarn came from Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, which, Shira informed me, is strange, because she actually meant for the story to be set in Vegas, but decided not to make it obvious in the text. When I spun the yarn (single ply) bits of the story would fall and flutter and fly around my wheel, leaving my work space every bit as paper-covered as the character’s apartment at the end of the story. This yarn will change as you use it or wear it; the paper is going to continue to fall out a little at a time, much like memories.

Emily Wagner