Back Page Essays

Lanolin for Healing by Suzanne Artley

Spin-Off — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 21:27:35 GMT

When I was sixteen, I was given a pair of riding gloves made from goatskin. They were soft and supple with lanolin rubbed into the leather, and I carried them everywhere. The smell was comfort I couldn’t explain. Fast-forward thirty-five years. Well, thirty-five years wasn’t exactly fast, but marriages, children, graduate school, and a lifestyle at the speed of light caught up with me just after fifty.

By fifty-one, I was in the recliner every day, flattened by chronic fatigue syndrome. Waking in the morning, I would sometimes feel normal until I got out of bed, took three steps, and hit a nauseating wall of fatigue.

Nora Meets Milan by Stephen Beal

Spin-Off — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 19:45:16 GMT

I’M THROUGH! Nora declared to Aunt Betty over lunch. The Russian Tearoom. Both women were Manhattan lawyers.

Three relationships in two years, Nora said. Out the window. I’m fated to be a spinster.

So take up spinning, Aunt Betty replied. It will give you something to do on the weekends.

What’s spinning?

Standing On the Shoulders of Giants by Judith MacKenzie McCuin

Spin-Off — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 19:39:56 GMT

As a spinning teacher I hear many wonderful stories: about children and animals, strangers and friends, travels and homecomings. I love to hear them all. But the stories that are truly dear to my heart tell how people first learned to spin. No matter the circumstances, or how long ago, when spinners tell me about their first teacher, I see their faces change and their eyes fill with fondness.

I remember Ed Franquemont telling me about living in a remote village in Peru. As the only adult in the village who couldn’t spin, he was a great source of amusement for all the children watching him wrestle with the subtle intricacies of the spindle. Ed subsequently taught many of us to use the Peruvian lowwhorl spindle and how to Andean ply, and I remember the warmth and pleasure he took in passing on what he learned from those skillful hands in Peru to our beginner’s hands in America.

Spinning a Cautionary Tale by Deborah Free

Spin-Off — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 19:34:09 GMT

Once upon a visit to my community library, I discovered a lovely old book of fairy tales. The cover illustration was a painting of a barefoot woman pensively spinning at a wheel. Her hair, like gold ringlets of spun straw, cascaded over her shoulders. She could have been Sleeping Beauty before she pricked her finger on the spindle.
Perhaps she was the miller’s daughter considering Rumplestiltskin’s proposition. But I felt too weighted down by my own hair to ponder her identity further. At the time, I was wearing my hair in a large bun on top of my head like a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder. “If I could let my hair down and learn to spin,” I thought, “maybe I could create some enchantment of my own!”

Wishful Thinking by Evelyn Clark

Spin-Off — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 18:35:25 GMT

Sometimes I wonder if I ever will graduate from the school of hard knocks. My latest lesson involved my dog, Mica, a spindle, and amethyst-colored Merino top. Only afterwards did I remember the adage “Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.”

It began with a Wallace and Gromit movie. I love those characters—especially Gromit, the knitting dog. I was thinking about that movie one day while I was spindling. Mica was lying nearby gnawing a toy, and for the first time, I noticed that she looks a lot like Gromit. I began to wonder what it would be like to have a knitting dog—to share an interest in fiber with a pet. It sounded like a great bonding experience. I looked at her and said, “I wish you could knit.” She didn’t even glance my way, no doubt understanding immediately the insanity of that idea. She is far too active. Knitting could never compete with gnawing.

Have I Got Worms! by Jeannine Glaves

Spin-Off — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 18:34:05 GMT

Last year, a spinner in my neck of the woods (Oklahoma) had more silkworms than she could feed and was looking for homes for them. I said that I would take 50, but when I got home I found I had 150—just a smidgen more than I had bargained for. Sometimes you get more than you ask for. I should have learned. This year I wanted 50 silk worms again, and a friend brought me some of her silkworm eggs. I didn’t count —big mistake!

Fiber Optics and Yarn by Diane Mulholland

Spin-Off — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 18:32:43 GMT

When I was very little, my mother taught me how to spin and knit. She taught me many other skills, but these are the two that have endured through years of dabbling in new crafts and activities. Over the years, our love for crafts has been a special bond. Mum and I talk to each other when we need to let it all out about a new hobby, an exciting project, or problems that need an expert solution.

When I lived at home, it was easy to keep in touch. It required no technology to walk into another room and show off a success story. Together Mum and I proudly displayed crafts around the home and taught visiting exchange students to spin. We made baby clothes for my new sister and went along to the local spinning group together. At the age of eighteen, however, I left the little country farm near Bairnsdale, Australia, to head for studies and a new, independent big-city life in Melbourne.

What Are You Doing? And Why? by Abby Franquemont

Spin-Off — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 18:31:24 GMT

Someone asked me the other day, “What are you doing?” “Oh, I’m cooking food,” I explained, “from raw ingredients. See, these materials here, if I use the right steps, turn into my lunch.” He wanted to know why I’d do that; I explained that I like eating. “But,” he said, “why don’t you just buy food? You know they have restaurants, right?”

“This way I get what I really want and really need,” I told him. He relayed to me that he’d been told his grandmother used to cook, but now that everyone can just go out for fast-food burgers, nobody he knows has bothered for a long time. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin,” he said. “You must have a lot of patience.”

Finding My Wheel by Linnea Tippett

Spin-Off — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 18:29:21 GMT

I am, like so many other spinners, a professional. Oh, no—I’m not a professional spinner—that’s far too lofty a claim for my abilities. Rather, I have a challenging,
rewarding, and often stressful fulltime career. Of course you know that spinning is a fabulous way to take one’s mind off the drain of a day of hard work, but most of my
coworkers view my leisurely pursuits in the world of fiber as something of a mystery—strange and diametrically opposed to life at the office. Yes, you could call me domestic, but don’t you dare think that I’ll retreat in tears if you mess with me during a meeting. Thought that yarn meant I wasn’t tough, huh? Guess again!

The Andean Connection by Amy Clarke Moore

Spin-Off — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 18:27:13 GMT

We’re just back from our twenty sixth Spin-Off Autumn Retreat (SOAR)—this year it was held at Pocono Manor in the Poconos of Pennsylvania. About 275 spinners converged on this peaceful setting nestled among tree-covered hills just as the autumn colors were hitting their peak. We filled the Manor with our spinning wheels
and fluff, chatting on the many soft sofas in the lobby and taking over all the meeting rooms with happy chatter about the differences between bottom and top-whorl spindles, how to reel silk, what’s the best climate for growing cotton, why a rigid-heddle loom makes a great tapestry frame, and how a new wheel should be “baptized.”

This year’s SOAR was graced by the presence of three Andean spinners— Nilda Callañaupa Alvarez (founder of the Centro de Textiles Tradicionales
del Cusco [CTTC] and author of Weaving in the Peruvian Highlands [CTTC, 2007]), Nilda’s husband, Paulino Huarhua, and Aquilina Castro, known as the fastest spindle spinner in the Andes and renowned for her singing of traditional Andean songs. Though there were language barriers, they proved surmountable in the face of spinners from different traditions who wanted to share their craft with each other.