John Wise

Time to take it up a notch, my bright ideas that is. 40 gifts weren’t enough; they needed 40 wrapping papers, but what then? Lump them together on the floor as a birthday mountain? Create a layout in blocks or steps as a kind of Enochian magic square representing the 40 gifts of wisdom and understanding? Har, got you on this pun; you see, Caroline’s maiden name is Engelhardt, or angel heart, and Enochian is the angelic language, so this layout would have a deeper meaning to my wife with the angel heart. No, her gifts did not end up as a set of angelic keys, I had greater plans. Why not hang them from the ceiling at eye height? Told you, this was uncontrolled stupidity. Time to buy 3 miles of fishing line, break out the ladder, tie up the packages, cut the proper lengths of line, and in less than 3 hours hang 34 gifts – thank god 6 gifts were outside on a shelf, that really saved me.

How many times did people ask me, where are you hiding so many gifts? There was a point I was afraid I wouldn’t remember them all. I had stuff in the trunk of the car, hidden behind blankets in the cabinet, in brown boxes in the top of our walk-in closet, in a storage closet outside, the pantry. I numbered the gifts, not just so Caroline would have an order in which to open them but for me to be sure on the 12th that all the gifts were accounted for. Even after numbering them, I felt this was reeling out of control and so I made a list of where each gift was. I think you are looking at about 15 of them here.

So accumulating 40 gifts wasn’t hard enough, what could I do to make this even more difficult? I know, I should pack each of the 40 gifts in a unique wrapping paper. Man, I’m a real idiot, what did I do to deserve myself? Where do these dumb ideas come from? Buying the first 5 wrapping papers was easy enough, but wait a minute, pull out the fingers and start counting, at this rate I will end up spending hundreds of dollars on packaging and wrapping paper. Oh well, once committed to stupidity don’t go asking us guys to back off a perfectly cool waste of time and money – we are in for the long haul by that time. If I had a recommendation to anyone else taking inspiration from my wonderful idea, do this for someone before they turn 20, er, 10.

I present you, the Charkha. This gift was pivotal amongst the 40 gifts for Caroline. Matter of fact, this was the first thing ordered. Originally it appeared it would have to come from India as no one on E-bay had a Charkha and the other online sites were sold out or just informational. No problem getting one from India as our friend Rinku would be leaving soon to her little village with one bullock cart in the state of Guj in India to get ENGAGED to the new love of her life – Yagnesh. Oh, if only I would tell you the stories about her swooning love for this guy, OMG. Anyway, I digress, I found this wonderful lady, Eileen Hallman of Charkha.biz in North Carolina, who sells them along with a DVD on how to use it – perfect. So now I wouldn’t have to wait for Rinku to wait in line a month for the bullock cart to return her to civilization to take more modern transportation back to America with Caroline’s Charkha in tow, it was here in a week instead. Oh, did I tell you? Rinku is getting ENGAGED! Weeeee!!!!

Like the title? Another paronomasia for you. Get it? As in, Dieing and becoming compost! Maybe this one wasn’t so funny; composted death didn’t find play in my tired imagination so I was left with that boner.

So what’s going on with these postings? Well, I had this bright idea to give Caroline 40 gifts for her 40th birthday and over November I chased, read, talked, researched all matter of things pertaining to fiber, yarn, dyeing, spinning, knitting and was coming up short finding enough gifts that were somehow meaningful. Every so often inspiration would strike, like this coup when I ran into the work of Kimberly Baxter Packwood of Prairie Fibers in Iowa. Kimberly dyes using an unusual technique of rusting, composting, and fermenting substances on fiber, yarn, and cloth giving stunning results. It was great finding the author of the two books dealing with these unique processes; she dedicated and signed them for Caroline.

Doing a bit of backtracking here by posting pictures I shot while preparing Caroline’s birthday that I couldn’t post on these dates as it would have exposed the surprise coming up on the 12th. So you ask, who gives their wife Kool-Aid for her birthday besides the Reverend Jim Jones? The same guy who gives her a dyeing station, that’s who. Suppose some youngsters reading this will scratch their head regarding this reference. Well, I thought it was a funny paronomasia. And shouldn’t everyone have at least one paronomasia for their birthday?