nature vs nurture

first of all, thanks so much for the birthday wishes :)  it was a very nice  birthday.

now that you’ve met rudy and deb, i want to discuss their different philosophies of spinning.

rudy believes that each fleece wants to be spun a particular way. the crimp in the fiber gives you a clue as to how tightly plied it should be. each batch of top or roving wants to be spun from a particular end. indeed, each kind of wool even wants to be spun at a particular thickness/thinness. you can push and pull on these, but there is a pure way that the wool wants to be.

this is probably not plied hard enough for deb ;)

i don’t think Deb would teach anything of the sort. in the short period of time i spent in her retreat session, i found that she believes that color mixing in spinning works the best when you ply the yarn tightly to get dots. if that is what some might call over-plied, so be it. she seems to me to be a pusher and a puller. less of a, ‘What does this wool want to be’ and more of a ‘This wool will be this’ kind of lady.

it was really good to get both of these philosophies in a week because it challenged me in both directions.  to consider which end something should be spun from and think about what the wool wants to be, yet to also make the wool conform to my own intentions too.  it’s the balancing act of spinning.  it makes me wonder if whenever i have a hard time spinning something, perhaps it is more because i am ignoring what the wool wants to be and less that i’m doing something technically wrong.