How to spin milkweed

In the fall, on the way home from school, did you ever pick a dried milkweed pod and break it open to release the last few bits of silk.  Or open one too early and find all the seeds inside, looking like a scaly fish.  The sticky mess on your hands…

That would be the extent of my milkweed encounters, had I not learned to spin fiber into yarn.  I learned to spin wool first, and a fair amount about sheep breeds, shearing, skirting, microns, twists per inch.  I believe I next tried flax, and you do not need a distaff to spin flax, in spite of what you may have read in Sleeping Beauty.

I spun cotton, of course, back in the early and mid eighties, when natural and naturally colored fibers were being popularized among spinners by fanatics searching them out and growing them in our southwest.  Like so much of our modern lives, cotton is standardized to a few varieties, eliminating all the wildly occurring strains known to spinners probably up to the industrial revolution.  Here’s a staggering thought:  until the industrial revolution, every thread woven into every sail in every navy in the universe was spun by hand.  That includes the navies of the American Revolution.

Spinning fiber into thread is pretty neat.  I looked for fiber to spin.  I’ve proven you can spin dryer lint.  I’ve spun the cotton wadding in aspirin bottles into decent yarn.  It’s mostly synthetic stuff.  My cats were not safe, but I didn’t have a decent long hair cat during my spinning days, and the short hairs were not fine and soft enough for the yarn to be decent.

I spun a lot of dog hair, mostly due to knowing several Samoyed owners who would “just die” to have a sweater knit from Duke. Or Snowball.  I also finished one project by knitting the sweater for the customer, too.  He wore it ice skating.  According to his wife, several turns around the outdoor rink and her husband went down like a felled tree.  He lay on his back, unconscious.  Paramedics arrived, and one stripped off the sweater.  Steam billowed up.  He was treated for heat stroke, and recovered to skate the rest of the night.  Without his Samoyed sweater.

Some obscure place I read of milkweed being used as alternative to kapok for life preservers during the Second World War.  Thread spun from milkweed even was tried as an alternative to silk for parachutes during that war.  I really wanted to spin a silken thread from milkweed!

First problem—find a stand of milkweed when you are no longer seven years old, walking home from school.  I looked along the meadow trails of several local parks and found lots of milkweeds, no pods.  This was before internet.  I spent an afternoon researching milkweed in the library, and learned they probably are the dumbest plant on the face of the earth.  Some plants are male, some are female.  It still takes two to tango, and if a stand of milkweed does not have girls as well as boys, there will be no milkweed pods.

When I spotted a huge stand of milkweeds in a vacant field next to a local car dealership, I pulled right into the lot, told several salesmen I was not there to buy a car and headed off into the field to harvest just ready to open milkweed pods.  Know how you pick a couple of tomatoes in the garden and put them in your shirt to get them to the house.  I probably should have been arrested for indecent exposure back at the car, but I escaped the salesmen and drove home with my stash.

How to work with it?  I opened the first pod in the living room.  The air filled with hundreds of silken parachutes.  The cats looked at me with suspicion.  I had young grandchildren capture them best they could, and rethought the project.  I opened the next pod in a bag and carefully extracted a few bits of silk.  Almost impossible to hold, but I was able to produce possibly an inch of thread as I twisted the fragile silk and removed the seeds.  By the end of the first pod I had less than a foot of thread for an hour’s hard work.  I set it aside.

Weeks later I mentioned my project to another spinner.  She looked at me incredulously.  “But, milkweed is a bast fiber.  Just like flax, you open the stems and process the fiber inside to spin into thread!”  I knew that.

 Everything else you want to know about milkweed.

The Ringer

 I’ve knit for most of my life, and eventually realized I needed to make yarn, too.  Sourcing a spinning wheel in the pre-internet early eighties involved a good deal of asking, and eventually my younger daughter Shelly brought home a card she picked up at a festival in Kirtland, Ohio.  It was for a spinning and weaving shop down in Chagrin Falls, tucked away in a nice enough alley.

The owner of the shop was very knowledgeable, but couldn’t read my mind or my future, and in my ignorance I left the shop with a double drive band Saxony wheel with the most tichy mother-of-all ever.  I spent more than a year teaching myself to spin on that wheel, and really didn’t become a good spinner until I bought a chair style wheel from a local craftsman.  His wife spun; he watched her and figured out how to do it better.

Of course, one thing leads to another.  If you spin you may learn to weave.  You’ll probably find a guild to join and then you learn a lot faster.  Pretty soon you’re caught up in the whole thing—washing fleece.  Dying fleece.  Carding fleece.  Signing on with your fellow guild members to be a team in a Sheep-to-Shawl contest.

A sheep-to-shawl contest is a juried competition of several teams of spinners and weavers, generally held in a fair or festival context, offering a cash prize to the team that spins and weaves a shawl, washes and dries it and presents the shawl for judging according to the stated rules.  Beside judging at the end, the end, the judges walk around observing warping, weaving and spinning technique.  It can be a long three hours.

Along with some other local guilds, ours sent a team to a local contest.  We began gathering about nine in the morning, getting space assignments, setting up looms, leveling spinning wheels.  Then two out of county trucks pulled in and another loom was unloaded, together with three more wheels, and assigned a spot.  A local judge whispered to one of our more experienced members and the word spread quickly.  The Washington Court House team!  Four hours south.  They got up mighty early in the morning!

I was the weaver that year and Jan was one of the team of three spinners who produced the yarn I wove.  I wove to the end of my warp, we set about the finishing, turned it in and waited.  When we got the results, our weaving was good, our spinning was good, our shawl was judged short of the required length.  The team from Washington Court House took home the money.

Undeterred, our guild put together two teams for a contest the next year.  Jan would be the weaver on our team, and we made at least one practice shawl.  Then, with days to the contest, one of our spinners had to drop out.  Fielding two teams meant our guild didn’t have a reserve spinner to make up the required team of three spinners and one weaver.  The two of us left spinning knew output was not the problem; the two of us could keep up with Jan.  We needed a ringer.

Shelly was in the tenth or eleventh grade then.  Heck, she could have been in first grade as long as she passed as a spinner.  I broke the news as soon as she was home from school.  You’re going to be a ringer in the Sheep to Shawl contest Saturday.

The only wheel I had for her was my double drive band impossible to tension mother-of-all Saxony wheel.  I didn’t tell her all that, I just told her she had to make it look like she could spin.  By the day after tomorrow.

Shelly did nothing on faith.  She had to question everything.  Understand everything.  Analyze everything.  Eventually I grabbed my car keys and told her I would be home when she passed for a spinner.  I came home from my girlfriend’s house, hours later, and found her taking off a bobbin of nicely spun yarn.  My ringer was the real deal.

At the Sheep to Shawl contest our guild’s teams took first and second places.  Washington Court House was disqualified.  They thought they had tipped the scale by appearing with a painted warp.  But the other teams protested the violation of the plain wool warp and they were disqualified.  Shelly’s bobbins of wool went right into that shawl, along with mine and the other spinner’s. 

I was so pleased with her skill and effort that after the event I offered her to buy her a wheel.

“No thanks, Mom.  I got my ribbon.  That’s all I wanted.” 

The Ringer

A Saxony wheel.  Image borrowed from the Michigan Fiber Arts Guild.  The drive band is twice as long as seen, and doubled.  One  strand of the band rides along each side of the wheel.  The other end of the drive band does two jobs.  One side drives the flyer that holds the bobbin and the other side drives the bobbin.  The entire assembly, two uprights with the bobbin between, rides in a groove and is connected by a screw thread on the knob in front.  This assembly is called the mother-of-all, and must be tensioned properly in order to make wool spin to yarn and take up on the bobbin.  Wooden screw threads don't lend themselves to fine tensioning.

Children who came to shows, with ¿parent?

Most children who came to shows were a delight.  Often a wide eyed delight.  One young fellow watched me snip the triangular corner from strips of cotton I was piecing with mitered corners.  I’d filled a large, clear drink cup with colorful triangle scraps.  Bursting, the boy finally asked, “Can I have those?!?”  I looked questioningly at his father, who might not appreciate a back seat of cotton confetti.  Dad said, “He’s a crafty guy.  You’d make his day.”  So, I did.

I enjoyed conversations with parents who actually wanted their children to learn.  I can spin and talk and keep an eye on a child all at the same time.  The really little ones are so curious, and I spun slowly, ready to stop on a dime if a little hand came in too close.  But one little guy’s reach for the action took me totally unaware and I barely stuck my hand into the flyer ahead of his to stop it.  Five hooks gouged my palm and there was blood, to the great consternation of the mother.  The little boy announced “Boo Boo.”  That was no one’s fault but my own.

One time I was spinning and had a pre-teen boy for an audience.  He watched intently, but could not be engaged in conversation.  Then his karate chop stopped the flyer cold.  There surely was pain, but no blood.  He grabbed his right hand and ran, but appeared shortly thereafter with his irate mother who demanded I pay for a trip to the emergency room for an x-ray.  I told her I’d see her x-ray and raise her a custom made, recently karate chopped cherry flyer.  They stormed off.  That flyer is still cracked across the base.

My best defense against unsupervised and stupid children was a good offense, and an order to leave.  One young lady disengaged herself from her group of very young teens, walked into my booth, into the center of a clothing rack and commenced turning in circles, twisting the clothing into a rope about herself.  I said “Out. Out. Out.”  Loudly and not politely.  She ran, but returned, bawling, with parent.  “What did you do to my daughter?” from the angry parent.  The girl sobbed, pointed at me, hiccupped.  I said to her “Tell your mother what you did.”    After a few minutes of these two sentences being exchanged over and over, mom took sobbing child and left.

In recalling these two incidents, I’m still troubled for these children.  I can recall rude and stupid things I did as a child.  I knew they were rude and stupid when I did them.  I knew I would not do that again, and only thought of parental intervention the two times I had to be taken for stitches.  To the best of my knowledge, my parents never berated the parents of the other children involved.  The two children I mentioned would thirty or more by now.  I  hope they learned to take responsibility.

Those two are my “bad kid’ instances.  And they were totally trumped by the good kids.  I was demonstrating weaving at the St. James Court Art Show in Louisville and into my warp, weft, shuttle and shedd talk to an audience when I heard a young voice yelling “She’s not going over and under!  She’s not going over and under!”  A young girl was running across the street and stopped beside me.  “You’re not going over and under!”    A quantum technical leap.  I  gave her the bench and shooed her embarrassed parents into the audience.  She was a natural and after two minutes was demonstrating changing shedds, throwing the shuttle, beating on the open and closed shed, and making neat selvedges as I stood up and talked.  I bet all weavers started on potholders, over and under. I hope she got a loom and lessons.

A great potholder site

Missed opportunity

The Cuyahoga Valley National Park put on a Heritage Festival, years ago, and we were fortunate enough to be invited the three years it was held.  The headliner the first year was Pete Seeger.  Second year, Arlo Guthrie.  Third year Joan Baez.  These were fairly small events, not the crowds I encountered years later at SPAC.  There was acoustical music and beautiful weather all three years.

I knew Beth would enjoy the music, and be a help, so we asked her along.  We had to demonstrate and Jan brought a loom for Pete Seeger.  We took spinning wheels for Arlo Guthrie, and a loom again for Joan Baez.  Beth also brought her boyfriend de jour for Pete Seeger.

The morning pace was peaceful, with plenty of patrons on the grounds, wandering between break out stages with local and some national folk groups.  Sales were steady, but not heavy until later in the day, when more patrons were arriving for the headliner shows.  Jan was weaving, Beth and boyfriend were wandering, with instructions to be back to help before the anticipated afternoon rush.  When that came it was far more than I anticipated.  People who browsed in the morning were suddenly in line with purchases.  I looked around, no Beth.  I heard Jan talking to someone who had stopped to watch her weave.  I worked through the customers, writing them up, bagging them up, probably for twenty or thirty minutes until I was done with the last customer and could turn around to Jan and bust her for not coming to help me. 

I saw a retreating back.  I’m here to tell you, Pete Seeger is as recognizable from the back as from the front.  “Oh My God.  You have been talking to Pete Seeger all this time!”  My sister said “Oh, is that who he was.”  I’ve not forgiven her.

The Arlo Guthrie year was pleasant, but no adventures.  He didn’t wander around to see what he could see, although we could see him holding several little break out sessions.  The third year we heard Joan Baez, but didn’t see her at all, although the husband of a fellow artist told us they had been invited to meet her back stage after her performance.  La de dah.

Celebrities notwithstanding, the Joan Baez year was the best.    I wanted to get kids involved that year, so Beth and I took a loom dressed in every left over tube of carpet warp we had in the studio.  It was the best rainbow warp ever! We took several shuttles, a basket of rags, a bottle of white glue and a roll of masking tape.  And a big sign that said Weave a Placemat.  Before the show opened we practiced on a couple of exhibitor kids, and knew we had a hit on our hands.  With basic instruction kids wove their place mats, glued the headers, stuck a strip of masking tape with their name on their placemat. Kids in line wound the shuttle for their turn.  We took the finished mats off the take up beam when three or four were done, cut them apart and set them aside.  When the kids came back they learned how to knot the fringe and then left with their mat. 

We went through an entire warp each day and re-warped each night.  A lot of placemats went home with a lot of kids.  My favorite was a little tike, maybe four.  Feet didn’t reach the treadles.  A lot of feet didn’t reach; Beth or I stood behind the loom and operated the treadles from the back.  This little girl had a hovering mother.  We got her started and mom immediately offered advice.  Little tyke said she could do it herself.  Mother pressed on.  Little tyke laid down her shuttle and told mother she would do nothing until mother left the tent.  Mother backed up.  Little tyke said “I can still see you.”  Mother stepped out.  Little tyke sighed and said “I have to assure her I can weave by myself.”  And, she made a placemat.

Image

Old stories, old things

I like to listen to stories, especially stories of older folks about their experiences.  Jan and I took our spinning wheels to shows and the spinning brought out so many old stories.  Old men telling how they had unloaded cotton bales to spinning mills in the south.  The adult children saying “Nobody wants to hear those old stories, Dad.”  But I did want to hear them.  One lovely afternoon a frail old woman stopped and then in heavily accented English described her job in a silk mill in France during the war.  This time the children and grandchildren were as entranced as I as the old woman showed how they reeled the silk from the cocoons.   I asked how old she had been and she said from age 14 to age 18.  It was not hard, she said, but very tedious and the days were very long.  The war, of course, was the Great War, the first world war.

My hands down favorite old story came from a paratrooper.   Spinning puts the spinner about belt level of everyone passing by or stopping, and one older fellow had been watching in total silence for some time.  I commented that my brother-in-law also wore an 85^th paratrooper buckle.  Yes, he’d been in the 85^th during the war.  Back to silence, so I just kept spinning. 

Suddenly he asked if he could see if he could still spin. He was quite intense, as was the question, and I wrapped the very fine sock yarn I was spinning around the knob, stood up and gave him the chair.  He unwrapped the strand, drafted a little fiber, flicked the wheel and commenced to produce yarn equal to what I had on the wheel.  He spun to the end of the rolag, twisted his end around the knob, stood up, said “Thank you,” and was two steps into leaving before I could gather my thoughts.

“Wait, wait.  Please tell me how you learned to spin.”

He was a paratrooper in the second world war.  He jumped with several other men on some mission behind the lines, in Belgium.  All the men who jumped were separated in the air.  He landed alone in a field and was found by Belgian resistance, who took him to a farm.  He had been hurt in the jump and was of little practical use to the men, so the women put him in a cap, a skirt, a blouse, a shawl and put him in front of a spinning wheel, with instructions to make it look good. 

As all spinners know, it only looks difficult.  He learned the technique, and having nothing else to do, mastered the technique.  Until he was liberated he made yarn the old women were proud to knit into socks and balaclavas for the men.  He said he’d spun on a chair wheel similar to mine, and the wheel style had caught his attention.  Before he left he told me I had a very nice wheel.

A chair wheel simply means a wheel with four legs on the ground and stretchers between the legs to provide stability and immobility.  It’s a tough Google, but here is a Shaker style chair wheel and its web site.  When I have to get mine out of the closet, I’ll take its picture.  Except for four legs, it doesn’t resemble this one.

I was hoping to find a picture of the chair wheel I once saw in the Museum of the Appalachia’s.   it also was a chair.  The seat lifted up to reveal a horizontal wheel, the treadle was underneath.  I don’t remember the placement of the flyer.

No cup on the bus

Being a self employed artist/artisan didn’t land us among the Fortune 500, but it’s good, hard, honest work.  It can yield some tough financial situations that probably don’t happen as often to people with “real” jobs.  One biggie, of course, is the house payment due in two weeks and it’s not quite in hand.  In the retail business (and we were in the retail business), funds can be especially tight in the spring.  A few years in the business, or a good line of credit, and we can weather the spring in anticipation of a good selling season.  Before we got there we had to scrabble a couple of times, book a show at the last minute in search of the last of the money.  I remember paying the turnpike tolls across Pennsylvania with the change from Jan and Tom’s euchre bag, but came home with what we needed!

Another time I booked the craft section of a home and garden show in Michigan.  Just to underscore, these are the kinds of shows that you stand in the aisle on the fourth day and say “May God strike me dead if I ever do this again!”    Other exhibitors might be thinking they’d never do that show again, but I was also thinking I’d figure out how to get a year’s worth of house payments in the bank.

Home and garden shows generally run the best part of a week, and the hours are brutal.  Ten in the morning to ten at night.  Precious little traffic for the first five days.  I took my spinning wheel to pass the time when I was at a show like that.

So, I was in Michigan, at a home and garden show.  My booth was a corner, first one in line at the craft show after leaving the floor of the home and garden show.  There were telephone booths I could see just inside the main hall, and at the end of the first day some kitchen gadget in a box was left on the shelf at one of the phone booths.  The gadget in a box sat on the shelf Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday.  Saturday night, on the way out, I said to myself “Obviously no one is coming back for this; I’ll just take it home.”  And I put it in my bag.

Week day traffic to the home and garden show was light enough that the exhibitors could park in the lot of the exhibition center.  But weekend traffic was so heavy that we were required to park off site and ride a shuttle bus to the exhibition center.  When I got on the shuttle bus Sunday morning my arms were extra full, so I set my coffee cup on the seat.

That coffee cup was a Hotjo brand.  Nice broad bottom with a rubber coating.  Sat right on the console of the van and didn’t move an inch.  Had a stopper to keep coffee from spilling.  Nice cup.  When I got to my booth I realized I’d left it on the bus.  Back out in a flash, I met the bus bringing the next load of exhibitors.  No one had turned it in.  It wasn’t there.  But, there were two busses shuttling.  I waited for the next bus.  No cup.  I knew it was karma.  The kitchen gadget was packed up in my suitcase, in my van, miles away.  The shuttles were done running.  I'd paid the price. 

At home I offered the gadget to Jan.  “I shouldn’t have taken it, but I did, and my cup wasn’t on the bus.”  She wouldn’t take it.  So, I gave it to someone without the confession.  Ever since then, if it looks iffy, we’re bound to say “If you do that your cup won’t be on the bus.”

On the other hand, twenty odd years later, I find almost always my cup is on the bus.  Thank you, universe.

And, a little “your cup won’t be on the bus” story from my daughter, who owns a restaurant.  She likes to use little Dutch windmill salt and pepper mills on her tables.  One night a server followed a couple out of the restaurant, attempting to say “Oh, excuse me, madam, but I believe our salt and pepper mill fell into your purse.”  The server screeched up short behind the couple, who were surveying the hit and run damage to the side of their car.  The server came back in and told Beth, “Their cup sure wasn’t on the bus.”