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Modern women resurrect the lost art of spinning wool

February 2, 2006

Watch Kay Meyer work, and it will change the way you think about a sweater.

Meyer turns raw wool into yarn, and then into hats, scarves and other garments. On her spinning wheel, she spends hours creating a skein (a quantity of yarn wound in a coil) that could be purchased for a few dollars at a hobby store, and she teaches eager pupils how to do the same.

In the last few years, the yarn arts have surged in popularity, thanks to celebrity endorsements, hip young advocates like Bust magazine's Debbie Stoller and fashion trends. Everything associated with yarn is booming, from the variety of yarns available in stores to the number of people curious about how to make it. Spinning is an ancient technique that modern folks are learning to appreciate.

"Spinning wool is not anymore work than knitting a sweater a stitch at a time," Meyer said. "The idea of work is in your head. But there is a technique to learn, a rhythm to catch and that always elusive need for more time."

Crafty types find themselves drawn to the spinning wheel for many reasons ?environmentalism, love of knitting, even affection for pets.

She spins dog hair into yarn
An avid sock knitter, Sallie Hedgepeth, 46, of Johnston, started attending Meyer's classes after discovering yarn can be made from dog hair. She would like to make something out of her Husky mutt's fur.

As she flicked the knots out of a handful of wool at her first lesson, taught at Perry's Studiolo art gallery, she wondered whether she could teach the skill to her special education class at Ruby Van Meter. Some of the kids knit and crochet.

"Some of them would really enjoy this," she said. "They learn better if it's (a skill) that means something to me instead of something I just made up."

Another student, Sally Farley of Perry, attended the class hoping to do something with the bags of alpaca fleece sitting in her garage.

"We have an acreage, and my husband was tired of mowing," she said, so they purchased several alpacas.

"I own the Farmer's Daughter store, and I'm hoping to have (processed fleece) and sell it."

It can be commercially viable to make yarn in this manner, but only a few Iowa farmers have sheep-to-finished-product operations. Wool prices have, at times, dropped so low that the revenue from wool barely covered the charge of hiring a shearer, said Denise Bachelder, 43, of Hardin County.

The family was already raising the sheep when Bachelder decided to take lessons in spinning 13 years ago. She was intrigued by a childhood memory of seeing a woman doing spinning demonstrations for a pioneer village in Nebraska.

"When I started knitting, I disliked the feel of yarn in the stores and couldn't afford good wool in fancy yarn stores," she said. "So I thought, 'We have all these sheep. Why not learn to spin?' "

'Spinning Is Slow Clothes'
Why not? Well, for one, the cost. By the time you feed and raise the sheep, it ends up being far more expensive than store-bought yarn, Bachelder said. Even if you sell the yarn at a steep price, you end up you paying yourself far less than minimum wage.

Instead, she learned to shear and sells fleece to spinners on her Web site, http://showcase.netins.net/web/ozfamily/. Fleece goes for $5-$10 per pound. Roving, which has been machine processed and scoured, is $14-$20 per pound.

Handmaking your own yarn is not a frugal activity. At a fiber store, a full fleece costs a spinner about $120. Spinning wheels now retail for hundreds, even thousands, of dollars. Manufactured blend yarns start at a few dollars for a skein. Specialty and wool yarns are priced in the $6-$26 range and higher. Considering it is possible to buy a sweater for under $30, no one is taking up spinning and knitting to save money.

"This is an area where competition - well, it's really hard for me to say nearly slave-labor is competition - but the Third World definitely has the market on handmade textiles," Meyer said.

The way spinners look at it, there's a lot of yarn, and a lot of hobby to keep them occupied during the winter.

One of Meyer's students, Joanne Murphy of Redfield, compares spinning to the slow-food movement. That movement eschews convenience for quality, emphasizing carefully prepared cuisines made from local produce.

Spinning is "slow clothes," Murphy said.

Calming rhythm
And it seems even slower watching new spinners in class carefully figure out how yarn goes together, twirling their hand spindles awkwardly, intensely focusing on each inch of knobby yarn.

Even as spinners gain experience and speed, slow is still part of the appeal.

Meyer spins for the calming rhythm of working a spinning wheel. She prefers the quality and imperfect appearance of the handmade yarn's natural fibers, and knows her clothes weren't created by underpaid laborers. She has made her own yarn for the better part of two decades, even raised her own sheep.

She now buys wool from local farmers. "I like supporting people, continuing these breeds of wool that are becoming rarer," she said.

Spinning connects Meyer; to these farmers, to the land which provides the plants she dyes her wool with and to history.

When women immigrated to the United States in the mid-19th century, they took great pains to protect their spinning wheels from damage on the difficult ocean voyage. Once they arrived in their new homeland, many moved to areas where woolen mills had already been built. Their prized and carefully guarded spinning wheels turned into relics.

"Women have been spinning for thousands of years," Meyer said. "I'm doing something my great-great-grandmother did."