A Workshop with Judith

Many people call her "Mother MacKenzie". Some people call her a magnificent storyteller... All I know is that I just spent two days in a small (10 student) workshop with Judith MacKenzie McCuin, and she was a marvelous instructor. The workshop, entitled "Comprehensive Spinning", was a whirlwind in which I learned an immeasurable amount about the history and technical aspects of spinning on a wheel, but it was also a very peaceful and blissful experience to sit among my friends and spin from 10am to 6pm in Shiori's beautiful home...Above is a rather dark pic of Marian, Laura, Nancy, and Marie before the workshop got started. Note the gorgeous scenery outside though... Below is a photo of Judith having a conversation with Shiori as her husband, Shane made us an delicious homemade beef stew for lunch. (He made a real chicken pot pie the next day - it was phenomenal.)

I have no idea where to begin... That first day, I learned the difference between spinning worsted, semi-worsted, semi-woolen, and woolen (which has to do with the fiber prep, and also how you draw the fiber out from the web.) Up to this point, I had thought of myself as an experimental spinner... I couldn't tell you how exactly I was doing it, but I was making yarn that looked different all the time with a lot more effort than I really needed to be putting in. Judith says: Think of the wheel as an extension of you - it's your body that controls the twist and the draw, and the wheel can be adjusted to control the tension. Treat it like you would a musical instrument, such as a violin - it can be finely tuned and used to create something beautiful.

This analogy is perfect for me because I think of my cello all the time when I use my wheel. I'm smiling in the above picture because my jumbo flyer was too large for the project we were working on so I got to spin on Judith's Jensen wheel (hee, hee, hee!!!) That day we made 3-ply sock yarn, practiced a slub draft, tried spinning directly from combs, and made a one-handed boucle of Judith's own design called "Mother MacKenzie's Wolf Yarn". Wow, this was a very cool technique and if you saw this in a yarn shop wouldn't you just have to pick it up? (Now I know exactly what to do with all that Romney!)

The next day I learned how to use my wheel. I thought I knew how to use it before, but I didn't really... I remembered to bring my standard flyer this time, and she showed us how to use tension only to create different weights of yarn. Check this out!Same fiber, same treadling motion, same movement of the hands and arm, the fiber was even being pulled in at the same rate, but the amount of fiber changed when I adjusted the tension. And the glorious thing was that I didn't have to fight with the fiber to get the result I wanted! It was so much easier to draft and I didn't have to treadle more to spin a finer yarn... it just was, because I had the drive band on the smallest pulley and almost no tension whatsoever on my wheel. SO AWESOME. I am a much better and more confident spinner because of this brand-new-to-me, extremely practical, mind-blowing knowledge.
Let's see, what else... We spun more sock yarn, drafting from multiple colors and experimenting with different plies...

The one at the bottom there is a cabled yarn (two over-twisted, two-ply yarns plied together.) We also sampled some luscious fibers from Judith's stash:

Above from left to right is bison (lovely buffalo fiber), de-pigmented yak, yak & merino, yak & silk (dreamy,) cashmere (dreamier,) cashmere & silk (dreamiest,) silk & merino, and the one on the end there is the nylon I used in my sock yarn. Look at all this fiber she brought for us to dive through!

And that's only half of it! We experimented with blending colors of mohair and silk and spinning straight from cotton carders, and here was one of my favorites... Encasement yarn:

You know how recycled silk yarns aren't very strong because they are just a tightly spun single that unwinds as you knit? Well, this is a technique using two yarns (such as light weaving yarn... hmm, wonder where I can find some... Oh yeah, I think I've got a bit of that somewhere...) and you ply them together in the opposite direction while occasionally throwing in, well... stuff. We used recycled silk and mohair, but Judith said she's used threaded beads, glitz, feathers, even goose down. The possibilities are endless and this yarn is very strong... I can't wait to experiment!
Well, it seems like I've talked about everything, but I haven't. There are mini-notes scribbled all around my "official" notes - Judith just piles on the information. We learned about how different yarns and fibers are made and processed. We learned that superwash treatments remove the scales from wool, but not the crimp. We learned tidbits of history about spinning and textiles in general. I learned how to use my thumb to even out my plied yarn. We discussed different varieties of sheep over lunch, and even talked about plant fibers.
But best of all? I made a new friend...Thank you so much, Judith! It was quite wonderful to spend time with you.