Born in the Lambing Month
February, and the ewes lie down in the straw.
New wool, still curled.
She spun the first fleece of the year
and it came out the colour of the lambs.
February is lambing month in the high Middle Atlas, and the house smells of straw and milk for weeks. The first fleeces of spring are shorn soon after, from the yearlings, and they are the whitest wool a family will see: not yet weathered, still curled, the colour of the lambs themselves. A rug made from that wool is a lighter thing than the great winter floors, and this is one of them, under three metres and under ten kilos, knotted two centimetres deep so that it would still be warm.
Forty years on the cream has mellowed and the pile has kept its softness, and the few dark marks across it are spaced as if the weaver were counting lambs. It is the right size for a bedroom or for the end of a bed, or for a small sitting room with a single armchair and a window with a view, where a bigger rug would crowd the quiet.
Handwoven rugs grow in beauty, memory, and value with every passing year.