this past weekend, the local spinning and weaving guild held its annual sale. having only joined the guild a few months back, in April, I was quite excited to see what the event would be like. early Saturday morning, just as the sky began to lighten, I showed up to the event center with my lovely old antique spinning wheel and basket of accoutrements, ready to help set up the sales displays and then to demonstrate the meditative art of spinning fiber-fluff into yarn.
being surrounded by my fellow fiber arts enthusiasts, appreciating a marvelous range of beautifully hand-crafted art, and of course getting to show off my beautiful wheel amongst friends and strangers for six hours straight was most lovely. I was floating around in the happiest of moods all weekend long, afterwards.
my sturdy old wheel barely fit into the backseat of my little blue car, but we made it there quite safely, and over the course of the day, in between browsing and chatting and snacks, I spun an ounce or so of this green-and-cream merino wool.
the drive band slipped off just once in a sloppy tangle, but it wrapped back into its proper grooves easily enough, and otherwise there were no spinning-wheel mishaps at all. I felt quite pleased with my skills, even compared with the guild members who have been at this craft for decades longer than I have. even with only a few months of practice since I put this wheel back together in July, the coordination of feet and hands with treadle, wheel, and fiber feels mostly fluid and simple and smooth.
so far I have only spun 100% merino wool on this beautiful machine. spinning other fibers may turn out to be a totally different experience. we shall see.
as I improve my spinning technique, I keep pondering the ubiquity of foot-powered machines. so many contraptions involve foot pedals or some similar element:
- bicycles, of course
- skateboards and scooters
- sewing machines
- cars and trucks with their gas pedals and brake pedals
- pianos and organs
what else? this series of posts about the history of foot-powered machinery has me adding lathes and drills to the list. and because feet are usually significantly supportive parts of whole bodies that do lots of other things, we could probably count plenty of other human-powered tools in some sense. lots of machines are designed for people with legs and feet.
do airplanes have any foot-controlled pieces to them? I'll have to ask my students.
back at the guild sale, I successfully resisted buying any new wool, content for now with the bagfuls I already have piled up in the
corner of my craft room. in fact, rather than spending money, I actually sold some of my own
handspun yarn! there were eleven medium-small skeins total, all coiled up with labels, ready to find new homes out there in the world, and six of those were gone by the end of the day.
this lovely teal blue, spun rather finely and chain plied, made a 55-yard skein. someone will make something beautiful with it.
this dark grey ("portobello" was the name of the color on the label of the roving) became two ~50 yard skeins, both of which went home with some lucky crafter.
I also sold two 60-yard skeins of green-- the very first I ever spun on the wheel-- and one skein of multicolored "autumn spice."
two fluffy skeins of white-marble yarn, two spindle-spun skeins of pomegranate pink, and one of the green were left behind for me to take home again. I'll see what I might want to knit out of it all. I've been dreaming plenty about knitting lately, yearning for all the sensory bliss of yarn and needles in my hands and the satisfaction of seeing fabric come into being, row by row. maybe I'll even plan a whole spinning-to-knitting project, choosing fiber and creating custom yarn for a specific project. that would be cool.
but first, there are lesson plans and writing projects and student meetings and baking. somehow I will fit it all in.
No comments:
Post a Comment