Spin a yarn

I really like this piece by Esther Rutter on knitting and writing — making.

It is no coincidence that our terms for fibre and fable intertwine. When we want to recount a story, we spin a yarn. If we deceive, we pull the wool over people’s eyes. For centuries, female spinsters (the masculine form is spinner) spun wool to earn their livelihood, and the word gradually became synonymous with ‘unmarried woman’, one not dependent on a husband for her keep. We weave narratives as we weave cloth, and our words for them are bound together: text and textile share the same Latin root, textus, ‘that which is woven’. ‘Fabric’ has its origins in faber, an expert worker of materials including metal, stone and wood. ‘Forge’ shares the same root, the same practical, physical origins. Replete with echoes of blacksmithery, the word speaks of strength and skill, of effort and exertion. But fakery and fabrication lurk there too, threatening delusion, of fantastic duplicity. Fibre craft can be beguiling, and those that do it, dangerous agents for enchantment.