cotton

I’ve been spinning a lot of cotton lately, some on the Pocket Wheel, but more on spindles. I’m in love with a new spindle from Allen Berry, for one thing. I can just get fully absorbed in this until it’s full.

Allen Berry moon phases (old style) spindle. Palo verde cotton from Traditions in Cloth.

Given my propensity for walking around spinning, though, my favorites for cotton at the moment are an Akha spindle from Laos (I call it Akha because it really did belong to an Akha woman, who sold it to Maren from Above the Fray, who sold it to me) and an Akha-style spindle made by Kristin Merrit. These two are breezy and brilliant spindles, and having good fiber has really helped me get more comfortable spinning cotton on the move.

Kristin’s spindle on the left, Lao spindle on the right. Traditions in Cloth cotton spun on the Lao spindle in the little skeins. Thai handwoven cotton mat background.

Much as I love Allen’s spindle, I have to stay in one place while using it. I was trying to keep spinning while reading something on my laptop, and the wall was too close on my left side, my drafting side.

Which made me realize the zen thing about spinning cotton: you have to be able to open your arms wide, to spread out, to fully expand.

Not that I always use big gestures with my hands and arms, but the possibility has to be there. It’s a mental expansiveness, as much as a physical thing.

To spin it well and comfortably, I have to have room to move and breathe freely. The best, smoothest make is when there is nothing interfering with the movement, no sense of restriction.

How symbolic can you get?

And now that the sun is shining again, I have to grab a spindle and get out there. That’s all I needed to say.

The colors of the sky at this time of year… no words, just awe and delight.

enthralled

I'm completely devoted to spinning fine, smooth wool for backstrap weaving on Peruvian spindles these days. I spent the whole of July spinning a glorious green Targhee gradation from Yarn Hollow, and now I've moved on to the orange gradation (Cream Tangerine, to be precise), and some indigo blue I dyed at a recent workshop.

There's just something immensely satisfying about spinning for a purpose, knowing how the yarn needs to be, and consistently getting better at it.

future stripes

Two Ladakhi phangs and a Peruvian low whorl for these lovely fibers

It started with this set of fibers: Alpaca and alpaca/targhee blend from Abundant Earth, a creamy alpaca from Bliss Ranch (all of which were gifts), and the beautiful blue blend from my LYS. They all wanted to be spindle spun, and eventually used together in something striped, maybe a cardigan.

Little by little, in no particular rush, I spin on each of these spindles, then fill a second one, wind a plying ball, and ply on a high-whorl spindle. The alpaca is dreamy on my Ladakhi phangs.

And on the phang-style spindle carved by Janet, below.

And I love spinning the alpaca/targhee blend supported, as well. The prep drafts so easily, and the resulting yarns are very lofty and gently irregular.

Mmmm, that blue in with the naturals. It's not indigo, but it's doing a good job of approximating. That blue wool is all spun up, but I'm now spinning an amazing pygora merino blend from Rainbow Farms Pygora, which is the next amazing blue in this mix.

two spindles full

My master's thesis draft is underneath... seems like long ago.

A year ago, during the Tour de Fleece (Ravelry link), I started spinning Romney locks on my Peruvian spindle. Now, thirteen full months later, I finally have two spindles full and can start winding a plying ball. I've been posting progress shots periodically, feeling proud when the cops are growing on the spindles, and guilty/lazy when they sit around neglected due to brighter, shinier projects.

The fiber is so beautiful - from Catawampus Farm and Fiber — The fiber is so beautiful - from Catawampus Farm and Fiber

Because of course it didn't take me a year to spin this yarn. I don't know how long it really took, in hours, but when I put my mind to it, I could add a significant girth to the cop in one afternoon.

There's Nibali winning a stage. Most of the first spindle was accomplished during the 2014 Tour. With the inspiration of the cyclists, I could get a lot done.

If I were herding sheep in the Andes, walking in the mountains all day alone or with friends, and spinning only this project, I'm sure it would have been done in maybe a week. But it languished, partly because it was just that much more difficult than my other spins. I adored the way this Romney felt in the lock after washing, and it fluffed up so nicely with hand-picking, I just decided to spin it like that: hand-prepped, one little cloud at a time. That's not very demanding, but since I wanted the yarn to be suitable for backstrap weaving, I knew it also needed to be smooth and firm, with as little fuzziness as possible. The places where different lengths of fiber joined tended to fuzz up, so I found myself wrangling tiny bits of fiber to try to keep the yarn smooth - and this is what led me to put the spindles down so often. But this is also why I spin, to get better, to learn from the fiber and the tools. I'm still hoping the lesson wasn't supposed to be that this fiber doesn't work for this project! After plying, we'll see how backstrap-friendly my yarn is - and it can't be worse than what I was weaving with a year or two ago, anyway.

Second spindle, beginning of Tour 2015. Getting very specific.

My inordinate pride in the two full spindles reminds me of being in Qatar with Umm Hamad, when she was plying yarn one day. She had made massive plying balls, wound in courses, and after loosely plying (loose because the yarn would be dyed,) the spindle was hugely full. I was trying to catch a photo of this cop which must have weighed a couple of pounds, but she hardly paused before winding it back off into a skein for dyeing. She was just doing what she does: spin, ply, skein, dye, weave - and had no need to show off how much she'd done at any given stage. It was one of those moments (need to coin a good name for them) when I realize the true difference between my spinning and traditional production spinning. I get all excited about a single full spindle, and for handspinners in Arabia, Ladakh or the Andes, it's just a step, not a celebration. This is probably the case for many of my online spinning friends as well, who are way more productive than I am - they just fill the thing and move on. However, the large number of photos from different stages of the process speaks to our general excitement about getting spinning accomplished.

Umm Hamad loosely plying yarn on a large cross-whorl spindle. Doha, Qatar 2011.

On the one hand, my production may be pitiful, but on the other I'm privileged to have the option of spinning for pleasure and intentional learning, and I'm grateful to be able to celebrate a full cop or two.

pareh pareil

Two spindles made by Janet Scanlon, batt from Yarnwench

I'm spinning a dream these days, and the whole combination of fiber and tools fills me, as always, with gratitude.

I'd discovered a while back that I especially enjoy spinning textured batts on Janet's "Bird", a spindle she made with hand-carved crossbar arms and a vintage chopstick. It's a slow, relaxing spindle, that evokes the activity of its maker: gently handling bits of wood and lovingly exploring and modifying their shape.

The batt, a Yarnwench Wild Card Bling Batt, is as enticing as its moniker suggests, and this one in particular is called Sprout. Quite convivial, the Sprout and the Bird.

The beginning of the Sprout/Bird spin. The Bling Batt comes with locks, at left.

But Sprout is more than 4 ounces of batt, and spinning up lofty and bulky, it quickly filled the Bird spindle. In order to carry on with mood intact, I picked up another spindle of Janet's, which comes from further along her experimental spindle-making trail. This spindle is one of several imitative of Qashqai style spindles. There are many intriguing images of Qashqai women spinning, and while it was only possible to guess at the material and shape of the arms under all that cop, Janet worked with the idea of bent, uplifted arms, testing different methods and possibilities.

This type of spindle is known as pareh, in Iran. One day, another friend - who, as fortunate as I, owns a Janet-made spindle of this style - was meeting a Persian acquaintance and showed him the spindle. "Pareh!" he cried, "Where did you get this pareh?" - thus giving the ultimate confirmation to Janet's experiments.

I haven't used my pareh often, because it's a bit challenging, with its long arms and deeply nestled cop. But spinning with it now, I feel it as another step on my own experimental trail, the path of learning various techniques that suit the different tools we humans have developed for spinning fiber into yarn. And as usual, I feel a connection to the people who live with this type of spindle and technique, gaining some slight appreciation of them through working in a similar way (never mind that I'm spinning a Wild Card Bling Batt rather than raw wool from the nomadic herd!)

Detail of spinning with locks and sari silk incorporated.

In the video below, made in 2012, we were finally able to see the bare pareh, before the spinner covered it with handspun yarn. This kind of documentation is invaluable, to those of us who practice the craft and are eager for more information, and to anyone who appreciates the diversity of human culture and skill.

subtle scrawling

I've been spinning yarns based on images for several years, through Ravelry, and the intrigue never gets old. This type of challenge, composing a yarn that reflects and interacts with the same tone, colors, feelings and movement of an image, is incessantly new. The only reason I haven't done it on a weekly basis is that I just don't spend enough time with the fiber.

Most recently, I chose an image that epitomizes the palette of Doha. Everything here is muted, matte, and within a range of dusty, peachy, lightly burnished sandy colors.

I think of the buildings and the surrounding land when I describe this palette, so I was looking at my photos of architecture, searching for the right combination of color and texture.

But the one that struck me as the best one for spinning was a photo of notes, lashed to a pillar in the wholesale vegetable market.

I'm surprised to see that this detail has the same colors as the houses and buildings and natural surroundings of Doha. It seems that everything takes on the same tone after a while, especially if it is exposed to the elements outdoors.

At any rate, the image stimulated the spinning mind, and I gathered materials, many of which are weak manifestations of natural dyeing.

Wanting to emulate my friend Janet, whose projects bloom in bouquets of spindles, I've been spinning this entirely on supported spindles.

I used to make myself practice supported spinning, having learned it in order to study the traditions in Ladakh, but slowly this method has become more and more comfortable and pleasing to me, so I've enjoyed filling these spindles. One is my own recently handmade phang, the one above is a phang from Ladakh, and the third is from True Creations.

(And I just noticed, the beautiful bowl from Cathy Broski provides the touch of green/blue one sees in the modern buildings, or in the sea.)

And, a few months later.... here is the finished yarn.

getting medieval

When you see images of medieval spinning, the women are almost always using a raised distaff and holding the spindle low to the opposite side. Kathelyne has devoted a blog to exploring this, and the difference between this method and how we tend to learn nowadays (Please ignore the first video on the linked page - it is pure misinformation. Don't go there.)

Historic and contemporary images of Romanian, Portuguese, French, and Balkan spinners show a similar style. Seeing so many representations of this technique made me want to try. I'm not very good at it, but recently I've changed the type of wool I'm using, and I have the good fortune to try out a vintage Serbian spindle, which is very inspiring.

For some reason, this arrangement attracts me. When I see the distaff and spindle, I want to spin. I've been trying to learn how to spin by flicking the spindle in-hand, maybe just barely suspending (which I can't do, but Cyndy demonstr… — For some reason, this arrangement attracts me. When I see the distaff and spindle, I want to spin.
I've been trying to learn how to spin by flicking the spindle in-hand, maybe just barely suspending (which I can't do, but Cyndy demonstrates very nicely.)

the nomad caravan

This yarn is on its way around the world, in the form of an article in PLY Magazine (Follow the Fiber, Issue 2, Autumn 2013, p 67-69)

It was a project of a few weeks, involving multiple spindles, many fiber sources, 20 years of textile inspiration, and an active journal that became the written article.

As I was spinning each element, I enjoyed photographing the spindles against textiles, giving the yarn a context and playing with the relationships between my fibers and my textile collection.