Words and Photos by Denise Williams Handspinning can be a very expensive craft. When I decided to start spinning yarn, I had bags of wool but no tools. Internet groups were beginning to spring up, with ample advice encouraging beginners to buy everything under the sun. I’m sure you’ve seen it all: hand carders, drum […]
Calling all supported spindle spinners! How do you travel with your supported spindles (and their support)? Share your tip by going to our Tip Jar submission page. Your tips will be printed in the Summer 2020 issue on supported spindles. The person who submits our absolutely favorite tip will get a prize from us! It’s […]
Words and Photos by Sarah Thornton There’s a piece of cloth in my office: a shawl, about 22×72 inches, with twisted fringe, woven in a simple 4-shaft twill. The weft is a 2-ply white wool – nothing too special, rather coarse in fact, and somewhat unevenly spun and plied. The warp is a mirrored gradation […]
Words and Photos by Rachel Simmons I remember the first time I heard the word palindrome. I was in the 4th grade, and I thought it was awesome. I mean, could “straw warts” really read the same backward as it does forward? The answer is yes. And that makes me happy in a strange inner […]
Words and Photos by Joanne Seiff When was the last time you took a lock of raw or washed wool, teased it out into a cloud, and immediately spun it up? When I was taught to spin, back in the dark ages – the mid-1980s – we called this teasing the wool. This low-tech approach […]
Want to work for a great fiber magazine? PLY Magazine has 2 openings! We are looking for a layout/design person and an illustrator. Layout/design This is a freelance, satellite position that is ongoing and includes 4 issues per year. It pays a flat fee per issue, and experience has shown us that, depending on your […]
Words and Photos by Suzanne Correira I’ve been experimenting with using mud for coloring cloth ever since I took a class from Judy Dominic in the early 2000s. She studied African mud dyeing extensively. Then I started reading about the Japanese technique of Dorozomo – also mud dyeing. I fell in love with the fun […]
Words and Photos by Melanie Duarte As spinners we are always chasing cloth. The yarn we create may be beautiful on its own and it might hang out longer in our stash than we intended it to, but there probably was a goal when we set out to spin it. More often than not, that […]
