i was at an awards banquet with my husband last year, making small talk with our tablemates, when the pleasantly talkative journalist sitting next me confessed somewhat out of the blue “i ate the marshmallows.” the only segue had been that i had attended stanford. it turned out she had been part of the preschool class that had been subjected to the now famous Stanford marshmallow study, which tested children’s ability to defer gratification by asking them if they would rather eat one marshmallow right away, or wait for a promised two marshmallows in the near future. all kinds of future success was predicted for those children willing to wait for the two marshmallows in the future. clearly, her childhood performance was still haunting this outwardly perfectly successful adult. as the question sometimes haunts me. would i have eaten the marshmallows??

this little simple weaving of red-pine needles reminded me once again of that experiment, and made me doubt whether i would have had the strength of character to resist the marshmallow sitting in front of me. because the image above is not even close to what i had imagined making for STILL blog with those needles.  i had envisioned a collections of table-top weavings all using a different weaving technique.  then i would trim them, and assemble a little quilt pattern.  nice, eh?  well, i could barely got through the simple weaving above. the needles were unruly and very badly behaved. it was a chore. it was going to take forever to make six of these buggers. so i ate the damn marshmallows. then photographed what i had.

simple weaving of red-pine needles

saint paul, minnesota