I haven't posted lately because I spent 4 days at Convergence in Tampa spinning with Rita Buchanon! This was a wonderful experience. Rita is not only an accomplished, spinner, weaver, designer and dyer but has loads of information and history of fibers.

The 3-day workshop was learning to spin plant fibers. We spent Sunday on cotton. Even though I had spun cotton before, it had been a while and I was totally lost. The short fibers were very hard to spin. I haven't mastered this difficult but wonderfully soft fiber but, I'm spinning up all the cotton I have right now for practice. Cotton lint is much easier to spin than cotton sliver and cotton top is the most difficult. I plan to knit a dishcloth out of the cotton regardless what it looks like so I will have a keepsake from this project.

The next 2 days we spun ramie (remember those sweaters from the 80s), flax (linen), bamboo, tencel and other celulose and bast fibers. I fell in love with ramie. It is so soft and silky and very inexpensive ($2 an ounce). It's becoming more and more difficult to find. I bought 18 oz. of ramie at the Convergence Market.

I also bought some flax. I always read that flax had to be spun counter clockwise and wet. Rita says this isn't true but she does recommend plying the flax wet to smooth down all the little fibers that stick out. Imagine being able to create linen from flax.

The 4th day was a different workshop. We learned to spin very thick and very thin wool. Once again, spinning thick wool is going to take a pounds of fiber and lots of practice, but it's also a lot of fun. We also talked about plying wool to make thicker fiber.

I learned that you can also spin the fiber from milkweed plant (not the pod but the fiber in the stalks) and Kudzu! I fought to eradicate kudzu from the face of the earth for years. I'm glad they've finally found a use for it!







Rita wore a jacket or top everyday that she made from fiber she had spun and then woven into fabric. She had several pieces in the Convergence Gallery exhibit.

We brought towels to class to keep the fuzz off our clothes. Of course, Rita brought a towel she had woven in a reversible terrycloth technique.