Innehållsförteckning för Spring 2017 från Spin-Off

Colorado State University’s Department of Veterinary Medicine provides a vital resource for the northern Colorado and southern Wyoming sheepranching community.One of the CSU programs is a “lambulance” service, which offers its senior veterinary students a hands-on clinical experience. Every spring during lambing season at the Warren Ranch north of Cheyenne, Wyoming, students get a firsthand look at a large-scale commercial sheep ranch. The course was started in the late 1990s by Professor Cleon Kimberling, and for over a decade, the service has been overseen by professor of livestock medicine and surgery Dr. David Van Metre. About 4,000 of the Warren Livestock Company’s Warhill dams give birth to about 7,000 lambs in the spring. Students can take the elective over four to five weeks every spring, during which they witness the…

I love spindles. I love the materials they’re made of, I love the many hook shapes, and I love the incredible variety of whorls. I confess I often buy spindles based solely on their looks. It has taken me many years, and many failed spindle projects, to learn that I need to look more at the properties of my spindle, my fiber, and the project itself rather than the spindle’s appearance. Unfortunately, picking a spindle and fiber that look really good together just isn’t enough to ensure success (but it’s fun to do when you’re spinning just to spin!). Now when it’s time to spin, I look at my spindles for what they really are: tools. And that’s how you should look at them as well, because no matter how…

A year ago, I took the plunge and joined a spinning guild. I had started spinning casually two years ago when my friend Deb Gerish (see page 78) piqued my interest with her posts on Spinning Daily. I had just finished my master’s degree, so I decided to use my newfound free time learning how to spin. I made myself a CD spindle, watched a few tutorials on YouTube, and made some thick singles during Spinzilla 2015 for Team Spin Off. After a year of infrequent spindle spinning, I decided to seek out a group that I could craft with. At first, I tried looking up Ravelry groups with other thirty-somethings, but I quickly realized that age was not the deciding factor in finding the right group. I wanted to…

Standing roughly 19 inches tall and weighing between 30 and 50 pounds, rare Ouessant sheep are too small to meet the demands of commercial meat or wool production. Nor can they boast association with a well-known cultural identity as do Shetlands and Icelandics. However, thanks to some out-of-the-box thinking by shepherds in France and the United States, the breed is proving useful in commercial grazing ventures. Modern grazing programs are taking advantage of their lightfootedness, prolific grazing capabilities, and gentle dispositions. These programs could prove a viable solution for preserving Ouessant genetics and could help their numbers increase. OUESSANTS Ouessants are a hardy, short-tailed, primitive breed native to Ouessant or Ushant Island, located off the coast of France in the English Channel. They adapted well to the harsh conditions of…

Top or Locks? Camaj Fiber Arts’s Merino, alpaca, and mulberry silk Custom Blended Combed Top in Watermelon calls to mind juicy slices of melon piled high at summer barbeques. Spin it from the fold for clear color changes. $5/oz. Camaj Fiber Arts, (801) 440-0214; info@camajfi; www.camajfiberarts.com. Oodles of vividly hued locks will stimulate your imagination. Susan’s Fiber Shop’s hand-dyed Teeswater locks are ideal for one-of-a-kind art yarns, blending, and felting. $4/oz. Susan’s Fiber Shop, N250 County Road A, Columbus, WI 53925. (920) 623-4237; www.susansfiber.com. Silky or Woolly? Inspired by the Aurora Borealis, Spinning Straw into Gold’s new Aurora Silk Batts unite 70% tussah silk with 30% lyocell for a luminous spinning experience. Spin the batt in the direction of the fiber for a smoother yarn or attenuate the batt sideways…

For the past thirteen years, the members of the Wool Clip cooperative have organized the original British wool festival: Woolfest.Each year, hundreds of volunteers, venue staff, subcontractors, vendors, exhibitors, and fiber lovers gather at Mitchell’s Lakeland Livestock Centre in Cockermouth to rejoice in all things wool. Conceived of in 2005, Woolfest was inspired by large American fiber festivals such as the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. Since then, several other festivals have popped up around the United Kingdom in celebration of this treasured fiber. Over the years, Woolfest has grown in its renown, even receiving a special message from the Prince of Wales, Prince Charles, in 2014. Having reached capacity, the applicants for stall and exhibition space exceed the limits of the venue each year. Organizers actively try to maintain…

Every spinner is faced with decisions. Let’s take a look at the most fundamental. WHEELS UP! I have taught spinning for many years now, and the question that I am most often asked by new spinners is, “What sort of wheel would be best for me?” Let us assume that we are talking about your very first wheel. It may be that at this point there is no choice to be made because if you have been given or inherited a wheel, that is where you will start. But if you have been attending a class or using a borrowed wheel and have fallen hopelessly in love with spinning (as you do!), then you do need to find your very first spinning wheel. And I can’t tell you which one…

Building seems like a strange metaphor for tapestry, an art form that is soft and flexible. But tapestry is built a little like a brick wall, from bottom to top. The materials and techniques you use to get to the final piece are important building blocks in a structure that may not hold together well or last very long without the proper techniques and materials. Sett, warp size, and weft size all interact and influence the images that can be created as well as the hand of the final fabric. Tapestry is a type of weaving, but it is also an art form. Most often, the goal of tapestry weaving is to create some sort of expressive image. Many of the considerations so important when spinning for a garment, whether…

Hand-dyed spinning f ibers have an irresistible allure. The combination of vibrant or subtle colors blending into each other on a canvas of clean, combed top appeals to the imagination and begs to be spun. For many, however, the sheer beauty of an unspun handpainted top causes creative paralysis. Spinners fear that spinning the colors in the fiber will ruin the original colorway. There is a fear that the colors will all mix together and look muddy or that the colors, once so attractive, will actually end up too bright, gaudy, or even clownish in the final yarn. With spinning, all these color issues are under your control. You can make your handspun produce stripes, blotches, and spots; you can make heathered yarn or create very gentle, smooth transitions from…

Spinning is my first fiber love, but fiber preparation is a close second, particularly when I can achieve effects that are not possible from a mill. I have learned to make decisions and prioritize how I approach each fleece to maximize time, color and texture effects, and effort in the preparation of raw fleece into spinning fiber. My first time at a sheep and wool festival (Shepherd’s Harvest, in Minnesota, my local festival), I walked away with nine fleeces. I can only plead wool intoxication. It left me with a large amount of fleece but not as much variety as I would like. I learned over the winter that although I loved working with raw fleece, it might have been better to buy a wider range than I had gotten.…

Through generous contributions from participants and vendors, scholarships have been available for Interweave yarn events for decades. In 2016, our latest event, Interweave Yarn Fest, offered six scholarships for classes in crochet, knitting, spinning, and weaving. Denise Renee Grace was selected for a scholarship in weaving but took a number of spinning classes. During fiber events, I am used to being a Schacht girl, spending time in the Schacht Spindle Company booth sharing information about the tools I love. But when I got a scholarship for Yarn Fest 2016, I was excited to be a fiber girl: just a gal who is crazy about fiber— a participant. I wanted to use this opportunity to really expand my spinning knowledge. There were so many class choices, but I figured I would…

Natural Fleece to Five Batts Method 1 I began with a Corriedale fleece, then chose a gradient from purple to neon yellow with teal in the middle. I chose to spin singles for the socks and crank them on a circular sock machine. Weigh a pair of handmade socks that you’d like to emulate. Divide the wool needed for a pair of socks (plus a little for a fudge factor) into five equal piles by weight, then dye each of the piles. You can use two colors or a whole rainbow between the beginning and ending colors. Card each of the piles separately, creating five batts of graduating color. Divide each of the five batts in two, one for each sock. Weigh each of the ten piles of fiber; they…

So you just acquired your f irst drumcarder . . . What next? I remember when I got my first drumcarder. I hate to say how many decades ago that was, but it was close to our country’s bicentennial. My first drumcarder came with some instructions, but not many. Then, it was assumed that if you could spin or handcard, drumcarding skills would automatically follow. At that time, there were no books that talked about drumcarders, so I ventured out on my own and learned by trial and error. A drumcarder is not a complicated piece of equipment, but let’s be clear about what it can and is meant to do. The purpose of a drumcarder is to open up and generally align fibers to make spinning easier and more…

“You’re so lucky; you belong to the greatest spinning guild!” I often hear this from friends when I tell them about the latest in my world of spinning. Everything from my first teaching gig to a scholarship for a weekend workshop with a noted spinning author: somehow nearly every opportunity stems from my membership in Atlanta’s Peachtree Handspinners Guild (PHG). Sure, we also boast the more obvious guild benefits: a library of books, spinning wheels, and fiber tools available for checkout, scholarship opportunities, spinning retreats, and more perks than I can list. But perhaps best of all, I have found in my guild a home base of fellow spinaholics who consider handspinning to be a lifestyle, one meant to be shared for the sake of the craft’s continuation. Through these…