Dear Spinning Circle,

Welcome back to another Radio episode! This month, Rebecca sat Rachel down to quiz her about working through longer projects. It came from a discussion back in August at Knit City Calgary 2024. For context, let's set the table: Back in 2019, you were struggling with the idea of how to justify the time and effort to put into a really big spinning project to weave an heirloom piece. Do you remember that feeling? 

What is the Biggest Project you’ve ever completed? How long did it take? How did you feel about it at the end vs. the beginning? How did it change things for you?

Gentle Morning by Trin-Annelie here

Cheviot 3-ply handspun for Gentle Mornning here (1000 yards / 355 grams)

Rideau-Arcott/Charollais 4-ply handspun here (1600 yards / 550 grams)

What kind of big project dreams do you have right now? What, for you, is the motivation behind them? 

Aside from the obvious limitations of hours in the day (which is huge and should be acknowledged), do you feel like anything else is holding you back from trying one? How do we give ourselves permission to pursue projects like this?

Compare big projects - like spinning to weave for a coat, etc. -  a sampling-heavy or    learning-heavy big project, like Year of Yarn, Year of Colour (available for purchase), or a Certificate program. How is the process different? How are they easier or harder to justify? How does each one change you as a maker?

A can-of-worms question: do you think of these pieces as “art”? Would doing so change their perceived value?

How do you manage longer spins, especially those that are colour monotonous? How do you plan for these larger projects? Please share below!

Please take a moment to like & share the podcast, leave a review & share with others! For more, head to Patreon here.

Thank you for tuning in!

Rachel & Rebecca

Dear Spinning Circle,

Rebecca sat down with long-time active community member, Rebecka Roy, known as Becca and @bethy40 on Slack. Becca has been working on her Spinning Certificate of Achievement, from the Association of Spinners, Weavers and Dyers, throughout the past four years. With the recent discussions within the Wool n’ Spinning community about Spinning Certification programs, we thought it would a great opportunity to sit down and hear about Becca’s experience.

I hope you enjoy our conversation. Links to the website, Instagram and more are available in the show notes and at Patreon.com/woolnspinning.

Happy Spinning!

Dear Spinning Circle,

Rebecca and I had the pleasure of sitting down with Maxwell Stein of @maxwillspin (IG) over the past month. We chatted about his origin story, spindle spinning and teaching, as well as how his music influences his making. I hope you enjoy our conversation - I would love to have Max back on the show. If you have any questions you'd like to ask him, please post them below so that I can address them next time he appears!

Wool n' Spinning Radio (previous episodes) here

Wool n’ Spinning Radio Collection (Patreon) here

Remember to leave a review of the audio podcast wherever you catch your podcasts - it really helps the show be seen and heard by others looking for similar content! Thank you from the bottom of my toes!

Until next time,

Happy Spinning!

Dear Spinning Circle,

This month is the follow-up to last month's episode with Melissa Goulet of MellyKnits. We refer back to that episode a few times so be sure to follow the links below to listen to that episode as well.

Episode 107 | Putting Wool back in the Limelight with MellyKnits here

I hope you enjoy our dive into wool, getting started with first-time drum carding and beginning to delve into sheep breeds. For those new to spinning wool, remember that there are roughly four classifications of sheep breeds, including the fine wools, medium wools, longwools, downs and down-like breeds, and primitives. Fine to medium wools are often classed together, rather than separately. Think of them as being on a continuum from one another. We use the term ‘micron count’ several times throughout our conversation but never define the term for those who haven’t heard it previously.

Think of how wool is classified as being on a continuum. At one end, we have the Fine Wools with much crimp and bounce. At the other end, we have the long, lustrous curling crimp structure of the Long Wools. In between are the Medium Wools who, depending on their micron count, fit closer to the Fine Wool versus Long Wool end. Micron count uses computer imaging to assess the diameter of a fibre. The lower the number, the finer the fibre and conversely, the higher the number, the coarser the fibre. Within one fleece, micron count might vary significantly and as hand spinners, we use the averages to help us communicate with one another roughly how fine or coarse a fibre is.

If you have questions about what we discussed in today’s episode, please post them below. Of course, we would love to welcome you to our community. The Join button is also on the landing page here on Patreon for those wishing to learn more.

I hope you enjoy our conversation.

Warmly,

Rachel & Rebecca

Dear Spinning Circle,

This episode of Wool n' Spinning Radio has been a long time coming - Melissa and I have been trying to connect for a while, seeing each other at our local Knots & Hops each month, bumping into each other at Knit City and Fibres West throughout the years and so much more. It was a pleasure to sit down with her and chat about her business and love of wool - her enthusiasm is unbelievably infectious. You can't help but feel sucked in by her love of the process from her favourite part of the process, washing, to picking and carding.

Melissa's video on Picking Wool here

Thank you to Melissa for sharing her journey to date and I look forward to chatting with her again this summer to record a Part II. After we stopped the recording, she came up with topics for Part III, as well, so stay tuned!

Find Melissa:

• Instagram @mellyknits here
• Website here
• Ravelry @smellyknits here

If you would like to be featured on Wool n' Spinning Radio, have a story to tell or want to discuss your making, please reach out to Rachel. You can leave a comment below or message her privately!

Until next time,

Happy Processing!

Rachel

Dear Spinning Circle,

Today on the Radio show, Rebecca and I sat down to talk about the sheep and breeds that she came across at Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival recently. We chat a little bit about getting fibre preparation done, some of the road blocks to getting things started and more.

Patreon Post here

This was a stream-of-consciousness at 6am Pacific time - I hope you enjoy this off-the-cuff episode!

For more on Spinning Sheep Breeds and getting further down the rabbit hole of various classifications of wool, check out my workshop on the School of SweetGeorgia here.

We have explored washing sheep fleece in previous posts, specifically here. Within this post contains a list of posts that go through the classification of sheep breeds, including Fine & Medium, Longwools, Down & Down-like, and Double-Coated in multiple parts.

I also chronicle (through photos) a Farm-to-Yarn-to-Sweater prep, spin, dye and knit that I made several years ago, right after my dad died. It was a meditative project that offered a ton of quiet while I processed what had happened in such a short period of time. This sweater still holds an incredibly special place in my heart.

Comment below if there's a topic you'd like us to discuss & explore!

If you would like to be featured on Wool n' Spinning Radio, have a story to tell or want to discuss your making, please reach out to Rachel. You can leave a comment below or message her privately!

Until next time,

Keep Spinning!

Rachel & Rebecca

Dear Spinning Circle,

This month, on Wool n' Spinning Radio, Rebecca answered a bunch of questions from myself about preparing for a long trip. As many of you know, Rebecca and her family will be on Sabbatical from their work in Nunavut for 5 months. I wanted to understand more about how she prepared for the making she would be doing while away!

Patreon Link here

Here are the rough questions I asked Rebecca about her preparations to travel:

1. What were you thinking about when you were first preparing for your trip? What were some of the projects you thought about initially? Did that change in your preparations?

2. What kind of preparation did you do? Carding? Combing? Etc.

3. How do you envision travelling with your projects? IE. Do you see yourself crafting while you are actually travelling (planes, trains, etc) or are you prepping more for when you are actually staying in places?

4. Do you have any plans to pick up projects along the way? Purchasing while travelling? Any ideas about where you would like to go? Anything you are particularly excited about?

Thank you for tuning in today!

If you have a story to tell about how you got started on your handspinning journey, a project you're working on that you think others would be interested in or anything else, please reach out! We'd love to have you as a guest.

Be sure to check out last month's episode of Wool n' Spinning Radio here.

Until next time,

Rachel & Rebecca

Dear Spinning Circle,

This month, Rebecca and I sat down to discuss a slightly different topic that we don't often explore, which is about our journey to intentional spinning. Rebecca asked some incredibly thoughtful questions to ground our discussion and I would love to hear some of your thoughts - please leave your comments here!

Link to Patreon post here

The Journey of Intentional Spinning:

1. Can you describe your journey toward becoming an intentional spinner? What was your spinning like when you started? What drove you to become more intentional? Who were your teachers/resources? What practices helped you the most? Do you remember a breakthrough yarn or project?

2. ⁠Now that you’ve been an intentional spinner for a long time, what has changed? What is easier or harder now? How is your perspective different than you thought it would be? What practices have you held onto or let go of?

3. ⁠As a podcaster and spinning teacher, how does that impact your intentionality? How do you spin differently when you are teaching or producing “content” vs not?

4. What are some areas you'd like to continue to grow as an intentional spinner? Have you ever plateaued in your spinning - are there more advanced skills you'd still like to work on?

A few of the resources that Rachel discussed throughout the conversation:

Yarn-i-tec-ture: A Knitter's Guide to Spinning by Jillian Moreno here

The Essentials of Handspinning by Mabel Ross here

If you would like to be a guest on Wool n' Spinning Radio and share your story, please get in touch, either on Patreon through direct message or email (rachel (@) welfordpurls (dot) com).

Do you have any practices in your spinning that revolutionized your yarns? We'd love to hear about it - please share in the comments here. 

Be sure to share this podcast episode with friends and family, like and subscribe, and leave a review if you are able - it helps to increase the podcast's visibility when searching for new things to listen to!

Until next time,

Happy Spinning!

Warmly,

Rachel & Rebecca

Dear Spinning Circle,

This month we are joined by Suzanne Reyes, a long-time member of our community who had the opportunity to work on a year-long project called The Importance of Every Day Creativity. We had a wonderful conversation about the depth and breadth of creativity in our every day lives. She has presented this to faculty, students and now shared her story here! Enjoy!

More is available on Patreon here

Thank you to Suzanne for taking time today to chat with us about her project - it was very inspiring!

Definitions:

Generativity - a concern for establishing and guiding the next generation, originally coined by psychoanalyst Erik Erikson; the ability to transcend personal interests to provide care and concern for younger and older generations

Fibonacci - a sequence in which each number is the sum of the two preceding numbers (0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, etc ...)

Suzanne mentions many books throughout the podcast & I have linked to many of them below:

A Fine Fleece: Knitting with Handspun Yarns by Lisa Lloyd

A Craftsman's Legacy: Why Working with Our Hands Gives Us Meaning by Eric Gorges

Craft in America (YouTube)

Great Barrier Reef Crochet Project here

Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years by Elizabeth Wayland Barber

The Quilts of Gee's Bend by Susan Goldman Rubin

Crafted Lives: Stories and Studies of African American Quilters by Patricia A. Turner

Embroidered Stories: Interpreting Women's Domestic Needlework from the Italian Diaspora by Edvige Giunta & Josepf Sciorra

The Fabric of Civilization by Virginia Postrel

The Knitting Brigades of WWI by Holly Korda

The Secret Lives of Home Economics by Danielle Dreilinger

Connect with Suzanne for more information about her project:

Slack ID: @Suzanne_Reyes

Email: vsreyes4490 {at} yahoo {dot} com

Leave further questions about the project below, or this subject in general, and we will discuss them in a follow-up episode!

Until next time,

Happy Spinning!

Dear Spinning Circle,

Another month of Wool n' Spinning radio! I can't believe we are really into 2024 now! This is the second part (Part I here) of Rebecca and my conversation about our goals and thoughts about 2024. We recorded towards to the end of January so we have some initial reflections about the year, how it started and momentuum on projects.

Patreon Post here

Please take a moment to share with us your thoughts on one or all of the questions we were contemplating ourselves in this episode - we'd love to hear from you!

Specific to Our Making in 2024:

1. Are there skills you want to develop or projects you want to complete in your making?
2. Are there any time-wasting activities you want to reduce?
3. Connection within our making is such a huge aspect of what we do and who we are. How can you strengthen your connections with others in the coming year?

If there is someone or something you'd like to hear on future episodes of Wool n' Spinning Radio, please reach out! If you have a making story to share, we'd love to feature you on the show - get in touch be messaging Rachel directly on Patreon, Slack or leaving a comment below!

Until next time,

Happy Spinning & Making!

Rachel & Rebecca