#spinning

[bendy113]

how tf did i have the balls to make this in less than 4 hours what

i can't even breathe i'm trying to hold my laugh

[spontaneousmusicalnumber]

I've made a fiber arts community on tumblr!

I thought the concept was cool, at least better than those weird groupchats forever ago. Communities can hold up to 25 people, including me. Posts are publicly viewable.

Is anyone interested in joining?

[saja-star]

I've had a hard time articulating to people just how fundamental spinning used to be in people's lives, and how eerie it is that it's vanished so entirely. It occurred to me today that it's a bit like if in the future all food was made by machine, and people forgot what farming and cooking were. Not just that they forgot how to do it; they had never heard of it.

When they use phrases like "spinning yarns" for telling stories or "heckling a performer" without understanding where they come from, I imagine a scene in the future where someone uses the phrase "stir the pot" to mean "cause a disagreement" and I say, did you know a pot used to be a container for heating food, and stirring was a way of combining different components of food together? "Wow, you're full of weird facts! How do you even know that?"

When I say I spin and people say "What, like you do exercise bikes? Is that a kind of dancing? What's drafting? What's a hackle?" it's like if I started talking about my cooking hobby and my friend asked "What's salt? Also, what's cooking?" Well, you see, there are a lot of stages to food preparation, starting with planting crops, and cooking is one of the later stages. Salt is a chemical used in cooking which mostly alters the flavor of the food but can also be used for other things, like drawing out moisture...

"Wow, that sounds so complicated. You must have done a lot of research. You're so good at cooking!" I'm really not. In the past, children started learning about cooking as early as age five ("Isn't that child labor?"), and many people cooked every day their whole lives ("Man, people worked so hard back then."). And that's just an average person, not to mention people called "chefs" who did it professionally. I go to the historic preservation center to use their stove once or twice a week, and I started learning a couple years ago. So what I know is less sophisticated than what some children could do back in the day.

"Can you make me a snickers bar?" No, that would be pretty hard. I just make sandwiches mostly. Sometimes I do scrambled eggs. "Oh, I would've thought a snickers bar would be way more basic than eggs. They seem so simple!"

Haven't you ever wondered where food comes from? I ask them. When you were a kid, did you ever pick apart the different colored bits in your food and wonder what it was made of? "No, I never really thought about it." Did you know rice balls are called that because they're made from part of a plant called rice? "Oh haha, that's so weird. I thought 'rice' was just an adjective for anything that was soft and white."

People always ask me why I took up spinning. Isn't it weird that there are things we take so much for granted that we don't even notice when they're gone? Isn't it strange that something which has been part of humanity all across the planet since the Neanderthals is being forgotten in our generation? Isn't it funny that when knowledge dies, it leaves behind a ghost, just like a person? Don't you want to commune with it?

[bright-thehawksflight]

You know at first I didn't believe it when fiber artists on tumblr would tell me to be wary of the fiber art slippery slope. And yet. I hear the siren call of the spindle. Fellow crafters help me resist. Tie me to the fucking mast. Please.

[131-vr]

I saw someone using the gif, so, I cleaned it up.

[spinningabout]

Spinning right from the bunny. He was off course naturally shedding, and was perfectly content to let me take the fiber from him.

[0r0chi]

spinny fish

[falazaria]

First time posting something drunk on tumblr so here just that spinning gif I posted a while ago but deleted because I got embarrassed

probably gonna delete this tomorrow again but idk maybe not

[milkweedman]

fiber arts really is such an insane category of Things in how it can draw you in. like, 6 or 7 years ago i learnt to crochet and made a few terrible hats and scarves. then i learnt to knit because i wanted to knit a scarf for my friend (now fiance :D). then i realized it should be a woven scarf so i picked up weaving instead, but i still really liked knitting so now i was doing 3 crafts. somewhere along the way i started dyeing yarn as part of my kitchen experiments, and then i was like fuck it i wanna make my own yarn ! and that is where the problems happened. in the span of like 5 years ive acquired like $2000 of various tools (spinning wheel, combs, cards, blending board, several looms, etc), bought dozens of fleeces, and now my bedroom is basically a craft room with a bed, i have wool covering every flat surface in there as well as a huge dresser full of wool and several large drawers full of wool, i meticulously scrape every last bit of avocado out of the peel so i can use it to dye fleece, and i don’t go anywhere (including in my own house) without at least 2 knitting projects and a spindle.

im not complaining or anything, but the rapid shift from ‘guy who does stuff, idk’ to ‘guy who is worryingly obsessed with wool and will infodump at length about medieval sheep husbandry and the history of nettle as a textile if you give him half a chance’ is like. extremely funny to me.

[heartnosekid]

halloween checkerboard crochet cake 🎃 by thepetitepudding on ig

[saja-star]

One of the things I like about spinning is that it feels like looking closely. Take a t-shirt from your closet. Look closely. It's probably knitted. You can see the tiny chevrons. You can see the way those interlocking loops stretch when you pull on the fabric. Look closer. Each chevron is made up of fine thread. Look closer. You probably can't even see this level of detail, but each thread is plied from finer strands. Look closer (you would need a microscope). Each strand is twisted from smaller fibers. When I spin, this recursive structure becomes obvious. Each level of structure its own long, slow stage of creation. I work from part to whole. Fiber, spun into a single, plied into a yarn, knitted into a fabric. Now when I'm lying in bed in the morning, I look closely at where the light catches the individual threads in my pillowcase, and instead of a shape, I see a structure.

[nat-stimmy]

Vintage Steam Powered Carousel Kettle (SOURCE)

[pigeonsparty]

Full Bloom

If you liked this video, consider buying me a coffee!

Link below~

[humphreyhippo]

20240207 - Inside the Turtle

The interior of a centre-pull 'turtle' ball from a turkish spindle after pulling out half the yarn.

[homesweetgoodneighbor]

Quick reminder on why it is never a good idea to piss off a fiber artist:

Go ahead. Insult a crocheter. Say their craft is somehow inferior. Remember a crocheter can use their hooks go Ancient Egyptian on you and rip your brains out through your nostrils, except we won't bother to mummify you first.

Knitters will not stab you with their needles because some of them are rather fragile, but they will knit you a fetching sweater...a CURSED sweater...THAT cursed sweater...and purposely make it about 5 sizes too small and strangle you with it. It will hurt, but you'll look amazing.

Embroiderers and any sort of seamsters use a sharp object to stab something thousands of times to make it pretty. Do you want to be made pretty? Do you? We WOULD REALLY LIKE TO MAKE YOU PRETTY...

Weavers can make your death shroud from scratch. We're talking sheep to fabric. All they'll need to do is make sure you are in the proper state to be buried. Know that it takes only a moment to make that happen.

Spinners make what is varying thicknesses of rope. Do you know what can be done with rope? Do you really want an answer to that question?

Here is the True Golden Rule: Thou shalt not demean those who work the fiber and expect mercy, for we shall have none. Your destruction will be made of ten thousand knots and each a curse upon your name and your house.

And, we heed the call to protect one of our own with the ferocity of angry bees.

Just be nice to your local fiber artist.

Chances are you'll get something warm out of it.