Who Spins and Weaves? The People Who Take It Up
People come to spinning and weaving through many different doors: a family flock, a college class, a potholder loom at Christmas, a search for something new during lockdown. The people below don’t share a single background. Some guilds, the local clubs where spinners and weavers meet, describe a wide range of experience among their own members. A handful of stories can’t stand for everyone, but they show how wide those doors can be.
If you’ve wondered whether this is for someone like you, read on.
Some grew up with it
Lexi LaMar grew up raising sheep with her family, and her handspun gifts are homegrown. As an insect biology student at Purdue, she brought her wheel to college. As she told the university, she wanted to keep it as “a nice stress-relieving, calming hobby.”
Nilda Callañaupa Alvarez grew up in Chinchero, Peru, and learned to spin at seven while looking after her family’s sheep in the mountains. She kept spinning while she studied in Cusco. “I always brought my spindle,” she says on a Textile Museum of Canada page. In 1996 she founded the Center for Traditional Textiles of Cusco.
D.Y. Begay, a Diné weaver, remembers an early teacher: “I watched my mother create stepped patterns with hand-dyed yarns.” Her family has raised sheep for generations, and her sister Berdina keeps that work going today.
Tyrell Descheny, also Diné, saved his pay from his first job, shearing his family’s sheep, to buy his own tools. He taught himself to make yarn and connected with elders to find which plants give which colors. When he and his grandmother visited a medicine man, she was asked why she wove. Her answer: “Hunger.”
Bette Hochberg, author of Handspinner’s Handbook, came from an Amish-Mennonite family who kept sheep and routinely spun and wove their own wool.
Some found it in a class
Sandy Staff-Koetter took a fabric design class at Utah State University in the late 1960s and fell in love with weaving. She went on to become a longtime member of the Spokane Handweavers’ Guild.
Rachel Mordecai, a professor of Caribbean literature, grew up in Jamaica, where weaving had little presence, and no one before her in her family wove, that she knows of. She met it as a teenager through an activity at a college in Canada. She wrote later of the years she spent wondering whether she was entitled to weave, and of not being able to explain why she is a weaver: “I only know that I am one.”
Some came back to it
Vicki Aspenberg took weaving classes after moving to New York City in the early 1970s, then raised a family and worked for many years in early childhood education. When she retired in 2012, she returned to tapestry through online classes with Rebecca Mezoff.
Lori Remz started as a child on a small potholder loom, “so everybody got potholders for Christmas and Hanukkah.” She took lessons in her mid-20s, then set weaving aside for a long stretch of family, farm and work. Joining the Spokane guild in 2013 brought her back, and she became its president.
Some came from another craft
Ellen Peller, a knitter and quilter, went looking for a new craft during COVID-19 lockdowns. She found the Spokane guild online, joined its Zoom classes, bought a simple loom and started with dishtowels.
Mary Homan, speaking on the Sheepspot podcast, has knitted for years. Spinning is a relatively new addition, and she is only now starting to weave.
Some wrote in to say why
These six are entries in Mirrix’s Why I Weave contest, published by the loom maker.
Terri A., in her late 60s, had thought weaving meant spinning wheels and giant floor looms. She started on a small lap loom, learning from a book and an online class, and writes that “no matter your age you can create.”
Jeanine E. fell in love with weaving at 35, after dabbling in knitting and crochet.
Lloyd P. joined his wife’s beginner tapestry class on a lark nearly fifty years ago. She lost interest and he became a weaver. After a thirty-year break, he came back to it when he retired.
Kaitlynn M. pulled a loom from her closet while caring for her young son, and it became her full-time work at home.
Sherry H. began at four and now teaches children and adults.
Joseph S., studying for the clergy, found weaving a spiritual practice.
What guilds say about who belongs
Here is how some guilds describe themselves in their own words.
- The Tawe Guild says “many of our members started out as complete beginners.”
- The Susquehanna Valley guild lets you attend one meeting with no cost or obligation, and members can rent spinning and weaving equipment.
- The Triangle Weavers have over 250 members, from beginners to experts, and their meetings are open to the public.
- The Spokane guild, founded in 1948 by 15 men and women, is home to handweavers, spinners and basket-makers.
The Handweavers Guild of America has international membership and invites all fiber art enthusiasts to join.
FAQ
Have I left it too late?
The people above started at many points in life. Jeanine E. fell in love with weaving at 35. Terri A., in her late 60s, started on a small lap loom. Vicki Aspenberg and Lloyd P. both came back to it at retirement. A 1977 Mother Earth News piece on Bette Hochberg’s book says age is no barrier to learning to spin.
Do I need experience to join a guild?
Not by these guilds’ own accounts. Triangle Weavers says it supports fiber artists “at every level of experience,” and the Tawe Guild says many members began as complete beginners.
Your next step
Look for people near you. The Handweavers Guild of America keeps a directory of affiliate guilds, and Spin Off has 13 Reasons to Join a Spinning Guild. Then read why people love fiber crafts, or go straight to spinning or weaving: where to start.