SOAR - workshop review and town crier

So why is it that there are no famous spinners in Wikipedia? Shouldn’t Judith MacKenzie McCuin have her page? And Rita Buchanan? There are no wheel makers there either. No Alden Amos, no Ashford, no Lendrum. These are the people that influence our lives, yet knowledge of them can be lost so quickly. Deb Menz and color should be listed, surely. The thing is, as fiberists are we too silent? If we are not telling the world about these people and just why they are so amazing, will they be forgotten? I think that not mentioning them devalues us, what we do. Now I hardly advocate collaring some stranger and telling them all the details of a beginning spinning class you took 9 years ago. But if we all just added a paragraph, a phrase about some Ah-Ha moment that really moved you, perhaps the perception of spinning and other fiber arts would change for the positive.

I will start myself, right here, right now. While in Margaret Stove’s Spinning for Lace class, she showed us a trick that was worth the whole price of SOAR. We grasped a lock and wiggled our fingers. Our fingers always ‘walked’ to the tip of the lock. Of course, it is due to the scales on the wool. Now this trick was so great that not only did we play with this during class, but several ran to the market to test other animal fleeces. Go try it right now for yourself.

Now, armed with this knowledge, don’t you think there is great value in lock by lock processing and spinning? Just think of the smooth yarns you can achieve for lace. It made me want to go out and take every class she teaches and reread all her books and articles. Because if this gem was in there and I missed it, what else have I missed? Margaret Stove changed my spinning life forever and I only took a 3 hour class. What about all the teachers you have known for years? Go, write it down. Blog it, wiki it, get it out there. Not their class content since we want them to continue to teach, but how they affected you and why. How has a spinning teacher changed your life?

And for those of you that haven’t seen enough of SOAR yet, we have pics from Judith’s class and the Wednesday review. Don’t you just want to dive into all that yummy fleece? Sorry if your class got left out; Fiberguy had the camera and was so busy looking at the wonderful results that he forgot to take photos.

Judith's Primitive Breeds class.


Class is over but the teaching continues.

There were just the most amazing samples from the classes. Margaret's lace shawl and Sharon Costello's Felted Animals class.

This is Abby, roping some strangers (golfers) into the magic of spinning for the first time.