I retired from my day work in 2011. Since then I’ve done some teaching in spinning, carding and fibre knowledge and tapestry crochet, and I’ve enjoyed it very much. But the time I may have left in life started to bother me: will I have time to do what I was longing for during all the years I worked full time for decades? It seemed I was planning for future classes quite often, trying to find fibres and preparing them and thinking of buying more equipment for the pupils to use. There’s not much money in teaching, good if I can get my money back, so buying even more equipment started to go hard on my economy. This year I came to a decision after having had a long and tiring time with Swedish bureaucracy to get my pay for two days of teaching in Sweden: I will stop teaching.

My last class was a mix of fibre knowledge, hand carding and drum carding, spinning on double drive and Scotch tension wheels, and top whirl spindle spinning.

I tried to fit in five spinning wheels and chairs in my spinning room, not quite sure I’d succeed:

I made it! It was crowded, but it worked. At one point there was a baby on the floor learning how to crawl while his mother learned how to spin, and he had a tough job: he crawled into dangerous corners all the time, and was picked up and moved to a “safer” place: believe me, there are no safe places for babies in my spinning room! That was an awesome child, he was happy for hours! And so was the other baby who was so young he slept most of the time. We were not a silent bunch of people… I’m still quite taken by these two new humans and their ability to stay calm in such a noice. Kasper added to the cacophony because no one had time to scratch him…

So this is how it looked before the ladies arrived. My Hansen Minispinner is to the left out of the picture:

I moved the fibre prep downstairs, with good help from my husband. As you can see in the first photo, Kasper was also helping as he always does! Today dear hubby has carried all the carders, drum carder table, wool, books etc upstairs again. And I have decided to keep all the wheel ready for work instead of pushing them against the walls and being forced to untangle them from each other if I want to use the one that was pushed next to the wall with all the others in front. Somehow I got more space with that arrangement. Don’t ask me how 🙂

We started with fibre theory for the first two hours. As a couple of the attendees have pet sheep, we talked a lot about ethical sheep husbandry, and also about pesticides and the use of water in cotton production. I was so happy with that discussion. People are quite aware of things now, compared to say ten years ago. But man made fibers and their part of the micro plastics problem was new to my pupils. I think some of them were severely deciding to cut down the use of superwash yarns and some clothes made from man made fibers. It’s not easy, but you can start by making small changes.

After lunch we moved to practical matters. We had time for a little bit of hand and drum carding, but there was no time for wool combing. Some wanted to spin, so all spinning wheels were in use, and at the end of the day two persons wanted to use a top whorl drop spindle.

Having fun with a batt: Santa beard!

There’s some doubt about me being able to quit teaching 🙂 But I don’t have to teach, I can go to events and just sit down and listen and talk and give an advice or two… and I can give advice on the spinning groups on Facebook if I feel for it! There are several awesome Swedish and Finnish spinning groups on FB, all with a friendly atmosphere, and lots of skilled spinners who can answer questions if I feel a bit tired of answering the same question I’ve already answered at least 1000 times.

The day was intense, a bit chaotic, full of laughter and some frustrated “I’ll never learn this” which later turned into “Maybe I’ll learn after all”. A very good day to remember. I especially like the “Maybe I’ll learn after all”.

Our little helper:

 

Now off to finish a spinning project. You’ll see the result in due time!