New fiber arts interviews are up on my YouTube channel

      You can watch some new YouTube videos on my channel, https://www.youtube.com/c/thesojourningspinner.  They are mostly interviews with fiber artists on their motivations, the tools they use, and the way they got into fiber production, fiber preparation, dyeing, handspinning, weaving, knitting, and crochet.  Some of it is about sustainability, a local mill, and local yarn and local dyes.

     Also, I warped my språng loom for a market bag.  And I got a Gulf Coast Native fleece from a local living history museum.

     Update: the warp-shaping on the språng loom interfered with the interlinking because I put it on the loom incorrectly.  I couldn't pass the twists all the way to the bottom of the warp.  So I undid the warp and went for a plan B.

Past Performance Is No Guarantee

      A friend wanted to talk about what she would knit next.  One of the things I said to her was, I understand the pain of having made something that turned out wrong, and sometimes it can be good to risk again and to be willing to live with the prospect of a new project going wrong for the hope of it going right.

Regional Mills versus Hand Production

      For over a decade I have been a fan of the non-profit Fibershed and its affiliates, mostly because the handmade, regionally-sourced wardrobe of the founder Rebecca Burgess caught my imagination.  I thoroughly enjoyed the YouTube video about it posted by Kirsten Dirksen, 150-mile wardrobe: local fiber, real color, P2P economy.  I read Burgess' dye book.  I had been meaning for ages to get to the nearest library that had her Fibershed book at a local community college but hadn't ever gotten around to it.  Then I found the audiobook version was available to borrow from my public library, and so I got to listen to it.

     Near the end of the book, Burgess asks us to imagine that we sourced our food the way we source our textiles, from afar, without an ingredients list, and with no processing or work done in the country, region, or home.  I hope I have transcribed this correctly:

Imagine living in a community where no one had a kitchen and the closest refrigerator, stove, oven, and cooking pots and pans were all located overseas.  There might be one person who still knew the art of cooking and had a few tools to make rustic meals but it was never enough to feed everyone. Almost everyone would order their food and it would arrive from overseas in boxes with no ingredients list.  In the case of fiber, mill systems are the kitchens within the system, and the one person who still knows how to cook can be compared to a handspinner, weaver, or expert knitter.  We'd never accept a food system with this level of infrastructure dysfunction and yet we are all too willing to accept this level of archaic and unskilled design with our fiber system.

     Burgess goes on to talk about the functional failings of her handmade wardrobe and how regional, commercial milling is the solution.

     I'd just like to say that the tools for home textile production may be archaic in that their designs are very old but they are still usable.  Skills are good to have.  So is control over the means of production, however small the scope.  Some handspun is fine gauge and suitable for wearing next to the skin.