Several months ago I was given a large bale of brightly colored fiber for spinning. In fiber-technical terms it was “roving” which means that the fiber had been carded (in this case by machine) and then drawn out into a long, soft, somewhat disorganized strand about 2 inches wide, ready for spinning. The wool was supposedly a mix of Rambouillet (90%) and mohair (10%) and had been dyed several different colors (magenta, purple, various blues, some teal) which had been roughly mixed together in the carding process, but not fully blended, and the ratios of the colors varied a lot; some of the roving was mostly blue and purple while some was a more even mix with big patches of magenta. There was about two and a half pounds in all.

My last post was a long time ago (two Novembers ago) and rereading it just now I had to chuckle at myself a little bit: the 12-16 fleeces I was mildly concerned about have now multiplied through two more shearing seasons. Almost all of them went to the mill to be washed and carded, but I saved that special brown lamb fleece, thinking I’d card it myself. It joined a few other fleeces in my studio that I’d kept to process by hand: a Shetland fleece and an Icelandic fleece from a friend’s flock in Michigan (each with a remarkably fluffy undercoat mixed with long guard hairs), and some locks from Edna and Lucy, the original ewes from my neighbor’s flock.

The remarkable thing about wool is that all wool comes from a specific sheep, and every sheep is different. Not only do different breeds have remarkably varied characteristics—the length and fineness of the fiber, the amount of crimp, the color, the amount and type of grease—but each individual sheep has its own fleece personality. The age and health of the sheep matters a lot: lambs’ wool is finer, and stress (from disease or lambing) can weaken the fleece and cause points of breakage. But the sheep’s wool also expresses the mysterious complexities of its genetics: perhaps a distant ancestor had some characteristic of fuzziness or fineness or color which, though not expressed in the intermediate generations, comes through in subtle variations.

The most fundamental forms of textile creation began—and still thrive—with the simplest of tools. Spinners are fond of observing that all you need to make yarn is a stick and some fluff. Knitters work with two sticks; crocheting uses just one (but it has to have a hook at one end). Looms can be huge and complicated, but the early looms that left behind their archaeological traces were essentially just frames to hang threads on, and weights to give the threads some tension. With these simplest of tools—one scarcely would even call them “mechanisms”—all of the world’s string and cloth was made until fairly late in the modern era.

Until fairly recently, in Western cultures where textiles are ubiquitous in clothing, house furnishings, safety equipment, and many other contexts, spun fiber was an absolutely fundamental aspect of life. I say “until fairly recently”: spun fiber is still everywhere all around us, but there are now emerging high-tech fibers that are extruded and don’t require spinning. Nonetheless, to create usable thread, string, rope, yarn, cord, etc. in the wide range of sizes, strengths, and material properties that we rely on, spinning is still an essential technology.

After spending a long time feeling that GitHub Pages was obviously useful, I am really grateful to Barry Clark for making it so easy to get started!