Spinning Class

Today I attended a guild sponsored spinning class in Knoxville.  They were able to get Martha Owen from the John C. Campbell Folk School in North Carolina (https://www.folkschool.org/ ) to come over and teach an advanced class entitled: "How to make the yarn you want to make in one day."

That title says it all;  Martha admitted that this was a whole heap of material from both week and weekend long courses at the Folk School, ied together along the theme of achieving consistency in yarn production when going for a desired outcome.

Martha is a storyteller and fiber instructor at the Folk School - this was obvious from the start, she managed to keep us all entertained through the whole 8:30 through 3:30 course while running through a ton of material and managing to spend some personal time with everyone in the 20 person group.

We mainly stuck with spinning woolen style, something I don't do much of myself (while spinning yarn for weaving), but luckily have done, so didn't find it as difficult as some of the folk on the course.  Martha took us through spindle, great wheel and our own various small wheels.  She had a whole heap of fiber samples for everyone, and there was much hilarity as the various 'divide by 20' solutions were found.

We progressed from spinning to plying and the day flew by - any spare time was taken up with viewing the 5+ tables of examples and photo's that Martha had set up.

With one goal (for me) to see how someone at Martha's level approached classes such as these so that I might look at my own teaching in the future more closely, I think this was highly successful.  When someone at Martha's level who interacts with and follows the 'elite' of US fiber - who I have paid particular attention to (online and via DVD purchases) - speaks she speaks with authority. 

I came away with a John C Campbell Folk School catalogue - maybe one day...