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How A Spinning Guild Got Me
by Kathy Hinckley

I learned the basics of knitting as a child, sometime around, oh, 1961 or 1962. I learned to knit and purl, but I never made anything but swatches, and soon forgot about knitting altogether.

I came back to knitting in my late 20s, and I’ve been knitting on and off ever since. But for many years I very rarely met other knitters. I worked in isolation. Although my finished products usually drew admiration from friends and co-workers, I couldn’t really discuss my process with them; if I tried, their eyes just glazed over. Things like lace doilies or intricate color work actually drew remarks like, “You’re crazy!”

I instinctively designed, right from the start. I almost never saw a picture of a garment and decided, “I want to knit that!” It was usually, “That’s an interesting idea, but I’d do that part differently, and I’d change this, and that, and this…” and before I knew it, I was conceptualizing a unique design. And then had to scout for yarn that would work for it. That I could afford on my secretary’s salary. Right.

So along around 1992 or so, it occurred to me that I’d like to learn to spin. New York City is not exactly, or at least wasn’t in those days, a hotbed of old-time crafts. And this was before the days of Yahoo Groups, or even the Internet, for most people. I had no idea how to find someone to learn from. The closest resource I could find was The Mannings in Pennsylvania, but being a Manhattanite, I didn’t have a car, so I had no way to get there. In retrospect, I can think of a few things I could have tried: The Society for Creative Anachronism, the staff at some local historical monuments, and so on. But none of those occurred to me then. So I let it drop.

I spent the next 12 years, on and off, wishing every now and then that there were some way for me to find someone to teach me to spin. By 2003, I’d been living in Los Angeles for awhile, another big city that hardly looked like a spinners’ haven. Nevertheless, the yearning to spin bubbled up again, and that Fall I began poking around on the ’net looking for spinning teachers in my area. I actually found one, but she said she wasn’t taking new students at that time. She said I might find a teacher through the local spinning guild — there was a guild? In Los Angeles? I couldn’t believe it. But their website wasn’t working quite right, and didn’t give a phone number or a meeting place (because they were meeting in people’s homes at that point), and I didn’t feel comfortable emailing someone I didn’t know to ask about teachers. With a sigh, I let it drop again.

The following January, I was in my local Starbucks, and saw a woman -- she’s now my friend Garen -- sitting at a table knitting lace. Until that moment, I had never personally met anyone besides me who knitted lace. My usual New York City-bred reticence with strangers went straight out the window. I immediately approached her and asked her what she was knitting. I saw that she was working from a book — Carol R. Noble’s and Galina Khmeleva’s Gossamer Webs: The History and Techniques of Orenburg Lace Shawls — and asked if she were new to knitting lace. She said no, she wasn’t, but she was new to knitting with gossamer yarn, and she couldn’t find what she wanted commercially, so she’d spun her own.

I gasped, then gushed, “You know how to spin?! Oh, my God, I’ve been wanting to learn to spin for years! How did you learn? Do you teach? Where do I go? Do you know any teachers around here?” She laughed and said she belonged to The Greater Los Angeles Spinning Guild, the guild whose website I’d found earlier, and invited me to come to their next meeting.

I was intimidated. I said, “But I don’t know how to spin, I need a teacher first. I can’t join a guild yet.” She said “Of course you can, we’ll teach you.”

Garen was true to her word. She brought me to an informal spin at the then-guild president’s home, and brought me to a guild meeting a week later. She and other members were delighted to get me started, taking turns sitting with me as I struggled with a spindle, then a wheel. Overwhelming me with her generosity, Garen gave me fistfuls of different fibers from her stash, and lent me her Ashford Joy wheel for months, until I could get a wheel of my own.

At those first Show’n’Tells, I had only knitting to show, not spinning. The guild members not only admired my knitting, but they asked questions. They wanted to know about the very things I’d long since learned to edit out of my conversation about my knitting: Where did the stitch pattern come from, what did yarn I use, what fiber was the yarn made from, how much yarn did it take, how long did it take to knit, what adjustments did I make, what problems had I encountered and how had I solved them. I couldn’t believed how jazzed I was to be able to talk about these things that had been strictly private concerns for so many years.

And then I got to see, and touch, their projects — wonders of imagination and painstaking work spanning months, even years, the sort of things that would have had people I knew muttering, “She’s nuts, too!” But I knew these craftspeople weren’t nuts, any more than I was. They were passionate. After decades of virtually zero validation, I suddenly had a roomful of it!

I continued to feel intimidated for some time, while I learned to decipher the lingo I was hearing around me. In particular, that these folks knew about different sheep breeds and the feel of the wool each gave absolutely blew my mind. They also knew all this arcana about fiber preparation, dyeing, and different types of spinning wheels, spindles and other equipment, all of which daunted me.

But they all generously shared their knowledge, with lots of laughter and encouragement. It took me a surprisingly short time to get hip to spinning language. My skills grew along with my familiarity with the materials and equipment. My desperation for some sort of formal training, which the guild at that time didn’t offer, gradually wore off as I learned by trial-and-error and from the many impressive examples around me.

In the nearly five years since I joined the guild, membership has exploded. I’m now winding up my second year as guild president, and am in charge of the guild’s website. I’ve chaired one committee and sat on three others. We no longer meet in people’s homes, so we can publish our regular meeting place and date on the web. We now regularly offer programs on various aspects of spinning and related arts.

I count the spinning guild meeting as the most important day in each month. I’m full of gratitude for all the things that have come from my guild membership: the skills that keep expanding, the cross-pollination of creativity, and, best of all, the friends who “get” me as few others have. The debt I owe them is more than I can ever repay even if I win a zillion-dollar Lotto. But I’ll keep trying.

The Greater Los Angeles Spinning Guild meets the fourth Saturday of every month in West Los Angeles. We've been incorporated since 1986; our membership currently runs in the mid-80s. Come visit us when you're in town, or join our Yahoo Group!

Stephenie Gaustad lectures to a recent meeting of the Greater Los Angeles Spinning Guild