Guest Blog : Spindle Spinning

Learning to spin, take two

Amy Clarke Moore — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 12:00:00 GMT

We invited Lory Widmer Hess of Chestnut Ridge, New York, to share her insights as she learned to spin on her second attempt. Lory is the Managing Editor for the Waldorf Early Childhood Association of North America.

Realizing the potential of spinning

Lory Widmer Hess

My first attempt to learn to spin, on a homemade drop spindle in a Waldorf teacher training program, ended in total frustration. Years later I asked my husband, a lapsed but capable spinner, to show me on a wheel. His method was to sit down and spin away, telling me to copy him. But when I sat down at the wheel, I felt I was facing a monster that either snatched my fiber away or sulkily refused to take hold of it at all. I gave up.

When I heard about a year-long course at the Fiber Craft Studio near my home in Chestnut Ridge, New York, though, I jumped at the chance. Given a whole year, I might make some progress.

	The Fiber Craft Studio classroom. Photo: Shana Welkin Kestrel.

Our class of eighteen women met on one Saturday per month, slowly following the transformation of an entire silver-gray Romney fleece that we washed, teased, carded, and finally began to spin. In further stages we would go into the process of dyeing and knitting a garment; but I had to get over the spinning hump first.

I took up the drop spindle once more. I tried to trust the weight of the spindle, letting it do its work while I did mine: finding the right rhythm between motion and stillness, and sensing the right amount of fiber to feed to the twist. As beginners tend to do, I fed it too much and the yarn clumped up, then too little and it broke. But when I found the right balance, it was as though something outside me met its counterpart within; the chaos of life was brought into order. Around me, groans of frustration followed by cries of joy showed that my classmates were experincing the same.

Lory with teacher Renate Hiller. Photo: Shana Welkin Kestrel.

As the wool transformed under our hands, personal stories of transformation began to emerge. A kindergarten teacher told how a fearful six-year-old boy in her class, who usually had his hands completely closed up, finally relaxed and opened them in the tub where she was washing a fleece. A tired mother of a toddler noticed how bits of carded wool liked to cling together, an image of the warmth and love she wanted to create in her home. For a troubled sleeper with thoughts spinning out of control, the act of spinning paradoxically brought focus and calm.

Our hands form our bridge between outer and inner; with them we can transform physical matter to make something new, never seen before in the world, but also representing our deepest creative selves. What would I create, now that I had finally learned to spin? More than just yarn, I suspected.

—Lory Widmer Hess

National Craft Month Sweepstakes: Pass on Your Passion for Spinning

Toni Rexroat — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 12:00:00 GMT

When I was little, I remember sitting on the couch listening to the whirl of the wheel as my mom spun. She let me try my hand at the wheel and patiently helped me keep my drop spindle going. The spinning bug didn't really bite though until many years later when I came to work at Interweave. Again I found wonderful teachers in the Spin Off team and other friends—people who I can go to when I have questions about plying yarn or creating a balanced yarn.

March is National Craft Month. And to celebrate we've put together a fabulous sweepstakes to help you teach your own friends to spin. Just leave us a comment and tells us who you are planning to teach to spin in March or how you are passing on your passion during National Craft Month and you will be entered in this fun sweepstakes-a fabulous book for you and a gift for a friend.

For you:

Spin Art eBook + Video Download: Mastering the Craft of Spinning Textured Yarn by Jacey Boggs

Push your spinning skills to new heights and get adventurous with textured yarn with the new Spin Art bundle that includes it's eBook and instructional video!

Jacey Boggs helps you bring textured yarns to the next level in Spin Art. Inside you'll learn all the secrets behind her exciting new fusion of traditional spinning and envelope-pushing creativity.

The yarn styles explored in this comprehensive spinning guide are as well made as they are inventive. Jacey walks you through each of her techniques, with a refreshing mixture of quirky, fanciful, and unexpected designs that are always skillfully constructed. Inside you'll discover:

How to create innovative, eye-catching single and plied spun yarn styles, including wraps, beehives, bumps, racing stripes, loops, bubblewrap, multiplied, and more.

Detailed technical instruction with step-by-step photos with finished spun yarn and swatch close-ups.

Jacey's bright personality and motivational tips to inspire all spinning enthusiasts to unleash their creative spirit.

In the Spin Art bundle you'll also get the instructional video that provides additional handspinning demonstration and commentary to complement the techniques in the book. Jacey has bottled the energy and expertise of her highly sought after workshops into a personal, at-home textured yarn workshop experience for you.

Spin Art is an irresistible adventure for spinners who are interested in creating delightful and durable textured yarns. Get the convenient eBook and video download bundle now!

For your friend:

Getting Started on a Drop Spindle with Maggie Casey

Have you always wanted to spin but haven't yet found someone with the patience and skill to teach you? You're in luck-Maggie Casey is here to gently lead you by the hand into the wonderful world of spinning. Learn about the simplest way to spin yarn, with the drop spindle, and use it to start adding twist into your fiber and make the yarn of your dreams.

With this workshop, Maggie:

Provides a description of the spindle's parts and styles of spindles as well as materials you need to get started.
Teaches the park-and-draft technique, showing how to take control of the process of spinning and master drafting, twisting, and storing your yarn on the shaft of the spindle.

Demonstrates how to spin continuously while standing up.
Shows how to take the yarn off the spindle and twist two strands together in the opposite direction to create a plied yarn.
Finishes with techniques for setting the twist, creating a skein, tying it, and washing it.

Maggie will have you making your own yarn before you know it. Create great yarn for any of your knitting, crochet, and weaving projects. There is truly no limit to what you can accomplish with a drop spindle in your hands.

We'll randomly choose one lucky winner from all the comments at 9 a.m. Eastern Time on Friday, March 23, so comment before then for your chance to win. This giveaway sweepstakes is open to U.S. residents (excluding Puerto Rico), and Canadian residents (excluding Quebec); 18 years old or older at the time of entry. Click here to read the official rules.

For more great spinning tips and easy patterns browse through our selection of free downloadable eBooks.

Best wishes,

Handspun socks keep history alive

Amy Clarke Moore — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 11:00:00 GMT

The stockings Lydia Gladstone knitted for her husband, Igor, using handspun yarn. Photo by Joe Coca.

The handspun, handknitted socks Linda Ligon purchased in Mongolia’s southern Gobi Desert. Photo by Joe Coca.

Donna Druchunas’s socks based on the ones Linda Ligon purchased in the Gobi Desert. Photo by Joe Coca.

Exploring the world through socks

We've invited Jeane Hutchins, the editor of Knitting Traditions and PieceWork, here today to tell you about the new issue of Knitting Traditions that is out now.

Jeane Hutchins: PieceWork's third edition of Knitting Traditions is now available! While I truly love all of the contents in each edition, I revel in the exceptional people we meet along the way. Many are unknown and unsung; others have a name and a face. Their stories, often poignant, are the heart and soul of each edition.

Let me introduce you to just one example of each that you'll find in Knitting Traditions Fall 2011.

Lydia Gladstone handspun the wool and knitted these lovely socks for her husband, Igor. Not unusual, true, but the story behind the pattern used for the socks is so compelling. Lydia spent a bucolic childhood in Bukovina, Ukraine, prior to the onset of World War II. And it was during that childhood that Lydia's aunt and grandmother taught her to knit. Fast forward to the war years, and we pick up Maureen McGinnis Patterson's story about Lydia:

"Her strongly anti-Communist family fled the advancing Soviet troops, but in Germany the Nazis shot her father, leaving Lydia and her mother on their own with no means of support. Having no other alternative, Lydia's mother placed her in the care of Catholic nuns because, as Lydia explained, "she knew they would take care of me," but her mother later starved to death.

Lydia was twelve years old when she went to live in the Klosterschule Niedernburg, located in Passau. During the five years that Lydia lived there, she was treated with kindness and received an excellent education. The convent had no electricity, and in winter it was cold and dimly lit. The girls spent long, dark evenings at their school desks, knitting by candlelight while Mater Prefect read stories from the Lives of the Saints. The girls knitted white stockings with fitted calves, the ribbed tops resting snugly just below the knees.

"When I ask whether they used a pattern, Lydia replies, 'No, there is no pattern.' She excuses herself and returns with a pair of stockings ornately decorated with fine cables and both twisted and traveling stitches from the ribbing down to the ankle. She explains that they are the same as the ones that she knitted as a schoolgirl except that for these she has used her own handspun yarn. I thought again of her description of that chilly room, each girl sitting at a desk lit by a single candle, knitting exquisite stockings like these."

Wow! What an extraordinary story. And Maureen McGinnis Patterson interpreted Lydia's stockings so we could include the pattern in Knitting Traditions.

Linda Ligon, Interweave's founder and its creative director for the specialty fiber group, purchased these handspun, handknitted socks in Mongolia's southern Gobi Desert. I absolutely fell in love with them and asked Donna Druchunas to knit a contemporary pair based on Linda's, using camel yarn, and to provide the pattern for Knitting Traditions. The knitter of Linda's original socks is unknown, but we do know that she or he, like so many others from that area of the world, would have plucked the fiber from a camel, carded it, and spun it on a supported spindle. She or he—one of the hundreds of thousands, or perhaps millions, of unsung/unknown artisans—produced a pair of quite swell socks.

These are just two of the stories and projects in this edition of Knitting Traditions; there are many, many more in this 148-page knitting journey that begins in the United Kingdom and travels through continental Europe, Asia, Oceania, South America, and North America.

Happy travels!

Inspiring generations of spinners, weavers, and knitters

Amy Clarke Moore — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 11:00:00 GMT

Lydia van Gelder at the Oakland Museum of California, at their Samplings textile festival 2006. Photo: Susan Sullivan Maynard.

Susan's ikat vest made from a scrap fabric, left over from an upholstery job that attracted Lydia's attention.

Lydia's ninetieth birthday party where we all wore handspun, handknitted socks. Lydia is second from the right. Photo: Nancy Alegria.

Happy birthday, Lydia van Gelder!

Every region has their own inspiring teachers and active guild members, Maggie Casey is both here in northern Colorado—we are lucky to have them to push our craft. Susan Sullivan Maynard of the Spindles & Flyers guild, in Northern California, wrote a couple weeks ago alerting us to the 100th birthday of Lydia van Gelder. We invited her to share Lydia's story here with you.

Susan Sullivan Maynard: Lydia van Gelder, weaver, spinner, dyer, knitter, tatting expert, author, and teacher, turns 100 years old today. She has been a major inspiration for us in Sonoma County and Northern California. Her favorite expression is "it's not what you know, but what you do with it."

I first met Lydia at a textile gathering because she was following me closely, tracing the treads in the ikat vest I wore in order to figure out how the wedge shapes were tied and dyed. Ikat normally has parallel sides. It was a scrap of Laotian ikat silk designed by Jack Lenor Larsen. I did not know when I first met Lydia that she had written a book on ikat or was friends with the fabric designer. The next time we met, she had researched the fabric, found a design book with a photograph, and could explain how to tie ikat into that unusual shape.

Lydia taught textiles for decades, most recently at Santa Rosa Junior College, and therefore influencing decades of local textile practitioners. Her classes included spinning, weaving, dyeing with natural materials, tatting, knitting, sprang, and many other techniques. She wrote two books on ikat and many magazine articles, including one in the first years of Threads magazine that explained how to dye threads for self-patterning knitting.

Lydia's first major exhibition piece was her Houses on a Street tapestry on display at the 1939 World's Fair on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay; now in the Cooper Hewett National Design Museum in New York. A favorite blouse she wove of handspun cotton singles was ikat indigo striped and started as cotton lint. I suspect she may have grown some of the cotton in her back garden. Another favorite garment is a handspun qiviut sweater, but there are many lovely handwoven coats and dresses in her closets from the 1940s through 1960s when formal outfits were in style. Her house is filled with art and textiles: rugs, cushions, framed sculptural pieces, blankets, looms with work in process, spinning and knitting workbaskets by chairs. Her small front yard was planted with a pair of eucalyptus trees, producing different shades of orange dye.

At Lydia's ninetieth birthday party and spinners gathering, we were asked to wear handknitted socks in recognition of Lydia's knitting handspun socks for her three sons (with size 13 feet, no less) all their lives. One woman admitted that Lydia transformed her from a horse woman to a shepherd because Lydia taught her to spin and encouraged her to breed a flock of exceptional colored Romneys.

One quick handspun knitting project Lydia regularly kept at hand were gloves. But they weren't your typical gloves—they were knitted with bracelets, wedding ring, pinkies, green thumbs, and dirty fingernails! Another item Lydia knitted in the thousands were far-from-ordinary cotton pot holders, double-knitted with checkerboard colors and tatted edgings. This is the only knitted item I saw of hers in which she used millspun yarn.

Needless to say, I am in awe of Lydia, for her talents and her generosity. She still attends "Tuesday night group" as her students would not give up their class night when Lydia retired from teaching about twenty years ago.

—Susan Sullivan Maynard

Books by Lydia.van Gelder:
Ikat, Techniques for Designing and Weaving Warp, Weft, Double and Compound Ikat (Watson-Guptill, 1980).
Ikat II, Ikat with Warp, Weft, Double Compound Weaving, Shifu and Hand and Machine Knitting (Unicorn Books, 1996).

Getting Out of Park with Maggie Casey

Toni Rexroat — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 11:00:00 GMT

I have quickly become addicted to spinning. On cool evenings, you can find me excitedly watching the magic of twist convert fluffy fiber into sturdy yarn. I am still fascinated with the transformation. But spinning has been a home-based-only hobby. My spinning wheel is not portable. It doesn't fit in even my largest purse, and I can't see myself pulling it out to pass the time while waiting in line or watching a baseball game.

That's why I spent some time this weekend learning to spin, park, and draft with Maggie Casey. While this terminology made me immediately think of car racing, Maggie uses these terms to talk about spinning with a drop spindle. Unlike my spinning wheel, a drop spindle fits easily in my bag, and its portability means I can probably spin more fiber in a week with a drop spindle than with my regular wheel.

With Maggie Casey's newest video, Getting Started on a Drop Spindle, I quickly had my own drop spindle up and running. For those new to spinning, Maggie explains wool staple length and crimp as well as carding versus combing. For drop spindles, she recommends carded fibers, comparing the uniform staple to a drill team. And Maggie's thorough step-by-step explanation of drafting has improved both my wheel and drop spindle yarn.

I love Maggie's teaching style as she covers the basics of fiber makeup and drafting, then teaches seated spinning, covering the technique of parking the spindle in your lap to prevent the yarn from untwisting. Multiple camera angles allow you to see those little details such as hand placement when drafting that are essential when learning a new skill. And Maggie doesn't overwhelm you with information, rather, she gives you the most important step to practice first and then helps you refine that step, covering how to prevent or fix mistakes. She also includes tips and tricks to make the process faster and easier.

In conveniently separated chapters, Maggie covers every step of the process, including spinning while standing, plying (I love her use of flower pots to separate the balls while plying), creating a skein, setting the twist, and washing the yarn, making it easy to go back and watch individual stages of the yarn creation process. Order or download Getting Started on a Drop Spindle today and take your spinning with you the next time you leave the house.

Best wishes,