Bobbins and Easter Eggs

When I was a child, I loved dying Easter eggs.  My family was not particularly religious, and the activity was much more about the craft than the holiday.  We would spend hours gathered around the dining room table, each dying a handful of eggs.  Wax resists, masking tape stencils, multiple dye baths with eggs immersed for varying times were employed to make each egg unique and complex.  Later, as a college student, I helped my roommate set up an egg dying party for a few of the kids she babysat.  I hadn't dyed eggs in years and I was looking forward to the afternoon I had set aside.  Little did I know that very few families dye eggs with the same dedication that had been cultivated in my family.  That afternoon, two dozen eggs were plopped in and out of the dye cups and the table abandoned within a matter of minutes.  I was shocked, and slightly horrified. 
I was thinking about this occurrence as I wound bobbins this past Easter Sunday.  As you may note, time has been flying by in my world, making my weekly blog a little less weekly than I had anticipated.  And, while I still enjoy each visit to the Local Industry exhibit, I have found that my proficiency in winding bobbins has almost diminished the mesmerizing effect they once had.  I can wind quickly, plopping my bobbins into the collection tub much like the plop, plop, plop of quickly dyed eggs.  In some regards, this is perhaps a desired effect.  All visitors are workers in the factory to create this large piece of cloth, and my repeated experience, my commitment to this blog, gives me some sensation of "clocking in".  Perhaps in the coming weeks I will attempt to savor the last few weeks of this exhibit, to revert back to my meditative nature within this space, because all visitors are also collaborators in this exhibit.  They have free choice over the colors they wind, the combination of threads they choose, the amount they contribute.  As I overheard one child remark on Sunday, "It's like being an artist."  Duly noted.