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Home Spinning

© Ann Garner

Humanity and fiber artisanry have a very long relationship. In prehistory, animal hair or fur was collected from thorn bushes and was then used to lace up the hide garments for shelter against the cold for the northern tribes of humans. When certain animals, such as sheep, rub their Winter wool coats on the bushes and trees, twigs on the lower branches actually "spin" the fibers into strong yarn. No doubt early peoples found this yarn very convenient and pulled it from the low branches and used it in garment-making, snaring, trapping and tool-making.

From there, some inventive humans saw how the wool yarn was actually made, and decided they would give nature a hand. So spinning was invented, not on a spinning wheel of any kind yet, of course. But a stick in one hand, a ball of wool in the other hand, and a human thigh to roll the stick along make quite a nice little yarn factory when used skillfully. Technology in the developed part of the world has brought us a long way from those days.

But I once had the privilege of visiting a Bedouin woman out on the North Arabian Desert who had used a drop spindle (a weighted stick) and the wooly hair from her goats and sheep, and had spun a hoard of black yarn, as the Bedouin livestock are usually colored, not white sheep or goats. At the point where I met the woman, she had spun enough yarn to weave a new tent panel. The nomads' desert homes are rather large black tents. Many of these panels are sewn together to make a rectangular tent perhaps 20x30 feet to shelter the family. Because it seldom rains there, the tent has a rectangular top the same size as the dirt floor beneath it. The frame of the tent is provided by timbers that form beams and side-posts to support the very heavy water-repellant cloth. As a panel of cloth wears out from the blowing sand or is torn by vicious desert winds, it is replaced by sewing a new panel in its place.

The Bedouin woman's task is to help with gathering wood, cooking, caring for the children and weaving this vital shelter. This woman had made her strong yarn. Now her task was to find a place where her family could settle down long enough to assemble her loom and weave at least one long section of strong black cloth before they had to move on to new grazing grounds. On the day I spoke with her, she had laid out parallel tree trunks and had strung the warp (background) threads perhaps 50-60 feet, reaching from one tree-trunk to the other just inches above the desert sands, a backbreaking task. She had taken care to place the warp threads close enough to make a strong and fairly waterproof fabric. Finally, the woman had begun to run the shuttle back and forth with still more black thread to create the network of fibers that would yield a panel of cloth to protect her against the cold and sand-laden desert winds.

The copyright of the article Home Spinning in Textile Arts is owned by Ann Garner. Permission to republish Home Spinning in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.