A Mammoth Project

All right, all right!! Quit poking me!!

Who, me, delaying? I have no idea what you’re insinuat-

All right, FINE.

My name is Meredith, and I have ADCD.

Attention Deficit Crafting Disorder.

Here in the heart of my nest (the living room) are the scattered pieces parts of hundreds of projects. No, I’m not exaggerating that number for comedic effect. More like a tragedy, or a farce.

I have parts, and I come up with an Idea. Then I order the other parts to make a Very Cool Thing, and put the original pieces to the side. By the time the rest of the project arrives, I’ve somehow moved the first parts to another place, time, or second dimension from which extraction takes on all the full force of a gravity well.

I don’t get it either. If I have a dollar for every time I’ve said “my house ate it,” I would retire immediately, build myself a craft studio, and get everything put away or out in piles to complete what my mind is seeing as An Incredibly Cool Thing to Make.

But, with a complete reversal of political policy on the horizon, and the brutal fact that I may lose health insurance, job, safety because of orientation, or even my life if my meds are denied, it’s now time to think about having a legacy.

Honestly, that’s why I joined Vocal. Back in 2021, I almost died. It was really, really close. And all the stories that had been lined up in my brain, patiently waiting for their turn to live on electronic paper, started screaming at me. If I die, they would too, and no one would ever get to read them. I’ve mostly caught up, and I am very pleased with what I’ve written and the feedback from the various communities. But it’s only one of many creative channels I’ve had the good fortune to explore. And, let’s be real, with waves of political crap coming, electronic repositories of stories that explore the themes that I do are not going to be considered protected speech. Easily wiped away with a mouse click.

So, do I start small? The glass bead earrings that haven’t been made because I have to drill out a partially closed hole? Or the crescent moon dangles I purchased to put with the moon phase beads I made?

Or, being the uber Ed Sheeran fangirl that I am, do I just, like, reach over to the necklace that I’ve already made, and add the beads that I made for the new albums? That have been sitting here for two weeks, waiting for me to get my thumb out?

Or finally paint the gnome that Mom bought, and asked me to paint for outdoor weather over a year ago, that was waiting for me to buy sealant?

Or, maybe…

Go big, and finally finish The Mammoth Project?

Oh yes, it’s mammoth! It’s fantastic! It’s phenomenal!

It involves real mammoth!

Years ago, I was wandering in a rock and gem show, which is my native habitat. I came across a strange setup.

No tablecloth, no display props. Just a bunch of fossils – and a pile of packets of mammoth fur.

Now, mammoth hair had been on the market for a while. When this story began, two guard hairs of authentic mammoth, pulled out of the permafrost, were going for fifteen bucks. Sample bag, “authentic mammoth” card, two hairs. Pretty decent, if you’re a collector. What, you’re going to find your own in the wild? Have at!

These, on the other hand, were belly hair. Unimpressive. Bland. You do not know how incredibly rare that is!

What’s the difference?

Belly hair is spinnable. Guard hairs are not.

Like I may have implied, I’m a polymath of arts, crafts, and sciences. The older the technology, the more I read about it. Grew up in a household with archeologists, joined the SCA when I got married (a Medieval re-enactment group, and I lean so heavily towards the arts and sciences of the period that I look like a bristlecone pine on the edge of a sea cliff.) I’ve been spinning for almost twenty years, and my drop spindles cluster like strange bouquets in coffee cups.

So I saw the pile, squealed, leaped and scooped up each package, snagged the ones trying to run away by jumping off the table, and threw my credit card at the startled vendor. Notice I didn’t ask the cost, I just grabbed. Them all.

Vendor was running the card, but of course, he was intrigued at my excited reaction. Finally, with receipt signed and prize clutched, he had to ask: “Look, no one, not one, glanced at the pile all day! You bought it all. What do you know that I don’t?”

I tried to explain. “Well, I’ve always wanted to try spinning mammoth-”

And that’s as far as I got.

The guy exploded in anger.

Shocked? Absolutely. But his anger wasn’t directed at me, as soon as I listened to his rant:

“I asked my students if they were all done with this! I asked them, repeatedly, are there any other tests we can do to this fur that we haven’t already done? Oh no, we’ve done it all, they said, no other testing or experimentation to be done, we’ve done it all…”

Oh, shit, he’s a college prof!

Too late to run now…

Yes, he’s the head of a college’s paleontology department. Budget got slashed, and he had to raise money somehow. So they dug into the closets and sold off the stuff they’d accumulated over the years, including the rest of the mammoth fur he’d personally bought on the border of a former Soviet country back in the sixties.

And no one had thought to spin it.

I am known as a person who spins the funky stuff. Dandelion fluff, cottonwood, spider web. Luna moth cocoon casing. Gray wolf. Hard, fiddly, and I’ve had better success than most, because I think outside the box when it comes to using the traditional ways of preparing a fiber. Because of the Mammoth Project.

Excluding synthetics and minerals, there are two types of natural fiber – cellulostic and animalistic. The first are plant fibers, and the second are hair and fur from animals. Mammoth, being an animal, should spin the way other animal hairs spin up, right? Microscopic hooks act like velcro, and when the strands are twisted, hook into each other and make the thread stronger than individual strands. Things like most European human hair and horse manes have the least amount of hooks, making them slippery and hard to spin and be strong. Ditto guard hairs from dogs and the like.

Cellulostics are the plant fibers, cotton and flax and ramie and hemp and the rest. I’ve spun a lot of them, including velvet leaf and birch bark and other funky stuff.

And now, mammoth.

What am I trying to prove?

Remember Utzi? The Iceman?

https://www.iceman.it/en/the-iceman/

I’ve been fascinated about him since the first article hit National Geographic. One of the things that stuck with me is that his cape was woven grass. Weaving implies spinning.

His bow was recovered, but not his bowstring. Of course; why should my research be easy? Bowstrings are spun, too.

So we still don’t know if Chalcolithic European people spun. But, could they?

I was also brought up in a society that was marginalized for centuries, and it colors one’s thinking. Including eating everything edible. Have you heard about when butchering a pig, you use everything but the squeal?

When butchering a mammoth, what would one use the hair for? Because they used everything else. If it was something like pillow stuffing, we’ll likely never know. But they spun plant fibers, it would only be a matter of time before they tried fur and hair.

All I wanted to prove is if it was possible.

It is easy to drop spin. One of my instructors used to make this point (cough) in classes by stabbing a potato with a pencil, and using it as a drop spindle. Of course, like any craft, it takes years of practice to get good at it.

Add to that all the factors going into making strong fibers. Diet, climate, humidity, breeding, all that mess. Those with frizzy hair know exactly what I’m talking about, trying to tame the mane that has a mind of its own. So, what factors come into play with mammoth fur that’s ten thousand years old? In permafrost that long, then sitting on a researcher’s shelf for another fifty-sixty years?

Those hooks (called scales) had been rubbed off. And the hair is more like plastic fibers than animalistic. It’s weird to spin, says the person who’s spun many funky fibers.

From there, a simple question of “Can mammoth fiber be spun into a usable thread?” became a Project. Could you, can you, make fabric out of it? What other fibers are comparable to mammoth to get a similar look, feel? What would a swatch of fabric look like? Can I make a swatch out of what little thread I was able to spin?

And that’s when I ran into the wall of academia.

Please, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for colleges. I graduated from one, after all, though they tried to deep-six my thesis, and therefore my career (long story for another time). They’re useful, and they’ve got cool equipment, and fun discoveries can be had in those vaunted halls.

But when it comes to independent researchers, not attached to a college, there’s no room at the inn.

I’ve emailed zoos and game farms, and I’ve gotten no response. Not even a standard “Sorry, we don’t deal with any researchers outside of academic accredidation.” So my hopes of getting more exotic furs to compare, like Przewalski's horse, or Pallas’s cat, or tiger, died. I even compared synthetic elephant to my spun mammoth, because real elephant hair is illegal to own. I would go through hoops and the mountain of paperwork to do this right, but even the government doesn’t want to deal with independent researchers.

And I get it, limited resources and grant money and such. But I’m not asking for money. I’m asking for access to a literal handful of exotic fluff so I can make some thread to compare it to my other threads. I don’t even need to keep it; pics and observations in situ are fine.

I bought a small loom, of the right size that I could make swatches with some of the weird fibers I’ve spun over the years. And… I just stopped. I haven’t touched the project since. I have all sorts of funky fibers that I haven’t spun up. Cecropia moth cocoon, pearl dust, rose stem, etc. And there they sit.

Why? I can make up excuses. Double medical diagnosis, a horribly toxic relationship I had to excise, a lawsuit against said individual, lockdown. Loom buried under layers of accumulation, waiting patiently for its unearthing.

Sigh.

Well, it’s time. Skip Phase Two, go right to Phase Three.

Depression? ADHD? Maybe even a fear of succeeding at something that no one else is doing or accomplished? But, as before, it boils down to this: I’m the one in the here and now. With an uncertain future, I can either leave the project undone, or I can do something, and make a small mark in an otherwise topsy-turvy world.

I know some of my past actions have proven to have awesome, unforeseen repercussions. I suspect, though I don’t know for sure, that some of my stories have done so.

But one thing is sure: this will be the year the loom will show a swatch of mammoth cloth. And you’d better believe I’ll be publishing the results right here!