Wilma Ham - a story of love and happiness

I have changed a lot in the last decade or rather what I think and believe has changed AND that has changed my Life, drastically.

The biggest change is how I live my life and how I am be-ing.

I feel far less dominated, I rarely feel the need to complain, I am careful not to get into overwhelm and I definitely no longer desire to run around like a lunatic.

I have fewer possessions that take up space and cause me grief. Most things that I have, I love and use.
In short what changed is that each day, more and more what I do I actually love to do, I love what I have and I love who I have become.

I love.

Love is the breath of Life, love brings forth wonderful lives.
Let me show you how love works.

I love natural materials; I just love working with wool for example.
So when I was at home pregnant with my first daughter, I took my chance to learn how to spin.
I had no trouble finding a second hand, reasonably priced spinning wheel and off to evening classes I went.
Rain or shine, it never bothered me; I always wanted to go and loved every minute of it.
I adored the teacher, I got on well with the other people in the class and I so enjoyed the smell and the feel of the wool when it slipped through my fingers on to the wheel.

For years I had a lot of fun spinning and dying wool.
I made a lot of sweaters, and I adored giving them away to people who liked them, people who enjoyed wearing wool.
But as it happened, life got busy, which is no surprise in this day and age; children grow up and go off to school and I got back onto the corporate treadmill.
I returned to work and spinning was forgotten, even buried.

But thankfully life flows and when love is involved it keeps changing for the best.
Last year we moved from the city to rural New Zealand and in the process I found my old friend; my spinning wheel again.
Like riding a bike, I got straight back into spinning, using the wool that had been patiently waiting for to me to finally get used once more, lovingly.
After a while I started to long for other fibers to spin. I had had goat fleeces but recently alpacas had become popular and I kept wondering how that kind of wool would feel. I also wondered how I could lay my hands on an alpaca fleece.

Then one day we had visitors who immediately showed a huge interest in my spinning wheel and the hanks of wool I had lying around.
Even with the proof in front of them they asked me if I spun.
My “I absolutely adore it” had them exclaim in excitement; “Oh we have alpacas but we do not know what to do with the wool. We so want to give it to someone who loves doing something with it, would you like to have the fleeces?”
Well, would I ever . . . and that’s how I scored my wool.
Simple? Yes!
Miraculous? Yes! Because it was not that long after I had the thoughts about spinning different fibers.
But there is more!

Thus I got the fleeces and the fiber was wonderful. So soft and shiny and after five sweaters the alpaca fleeces were gone and so were the sweaters I had knitted.
Looking at the empty bags I suddenly realized though that I was left with no sweater for myself.
Never mind, I wasn’t worried. I now trusted that I could attract more alpaca fiber with my love.

Then one day we went exploring another part of our new neighborhood and we curiously drove into a side road not knowing it was a dead end road that would end up on private land.
Before we knew it the road got very steep and although we were starting to realize we were going the wrong way, there was no way we could turn around and discretely drive back out the way we came in.
Embarrissingly enough we did arrive on that private property, right in front of its owners who were standing at their front door looking at us.
They were very sweet though and while we apologized, we got talking.
AND during the conversation she told me that she was breeding a special breed of alpacas known for their superb quality of wool.
Well that didn’t fall on deaf ears and before I knew it, I was in the paddock eyeballing the animals whose fiber I love but I had never seen in real life.
Oh, they were so cute and so pretty and so much smaller than I had imagined.
She also showed me some fleeces and the different types and qualities of alpaca wool.
She turned out to be a top breeder with top quality fleeces. Well I could see that, her fleeces were indeed beautiful.

After having has such an unexpectedly great time, I spontaneously invited them to dinner at our place.
And you can guess the outcome?
At our home, she saw my spinning wheel and I proudly showed her my work.
She also must have sensed my love, because she too generously offered me a fleece, telling me how she enjoyed giving one of her beloved fleeces away to a good home.

This time the sweater I knit is mine!

And that is how love works.

When I look back on the last decade, I realize that all the miracles that happened all involved relationships, things and actions – Structures - that I really, really loved.

If you want the more stories about our journey, Wilmas blog is the place to go. It is an interesting place; I'd love to meet you there so we can swap stories.