Alpacas - Vicugna pacos - Wikimedia Commons; Want to know the difference between a llama, an alpaca, and a paco-vicuña? Chris Switzer explains it all. Photo by Wikimedia user Philippe Lavoie.
The Winter 2016 issue ofSpin-Off_ is actually the last one of 2015, by a vagary of publishing, and my seventh as its editor. This is the Luxury Issue, devoted to the indulgent in fiber, equipment, and intangibles. I asked Linda Ligon, Interweave’s founder and still our guiding star, for her thoughts on the new issue. But the most important areyour thoughts! Feel free to send them to [email protected]. Tell me what you want to read about next._
Winter 2016
By my rough count, we’ve published 145 issues of SpinOff since its inception in 1977. Every single one of them has been primarily about twisting long flexible things together. What those long, flexible things are varies a great deal, and what you twist them with, and how you twist them, also vary—probably not infinitely, but going in that direction. But still—just twisting stuff.
You’d think it would get boring. I just read through the Winter 2016 issue, and I was not bored. It’s our annual Natural Fibers issue, and I counted mention of six different breeds of sheep plus twelve other natural fibers, including—curly horse? Yes, curly horse! What’s next—curly pig? Maybe.
Then there was hand-prepping and mill-prepping; plying balanced and consistent vs. unbalanced; there were overplied, cabled, and boucle methods of twisting those fibers into yarn. There were wheels galore, and spindles even more. This is starting to sound like Dr. Seuss: Can you spin a bit of fox? Can you spin some lengthy locks? Would you do it in a shed? Can you spin it while in bed?
The issue features an article by one of our favorite designers, Heather Zoppetti, on supported spindle spinning.
Spinning is such a simple thing, so embedded in our human heritage, it’s easy to forget its infinite variety. Well, there I said it—infinite. And with only 145 issues of SpinOff in existence, we’ve only just begun.
Founder, Interweave spinningdaily.com