Spinning on a Wheel - March 23, 2025

March 23, 2025

9am-4pm

Spinning on a wheel has endured as a craft that is at once relaxing, empowering, challenging, and creative. By learning to spin, you reach back in history to connect with an ancient craft, inextricably tied to the creation of fabrics and textiles, while forging ahead to a future created by you. In this class, students will have the opportunity to try a variety of wheel designs, to find what works best for each student. Fiber preparation will be discussed; how to wash wool, use combs, hand and drum carder.  As time allows we will discuss ways to finish our yarns, how to ply, and what can be made with hand spun yarn. These skills are excellent on their own, but are easier learned when paired with the previous class, Spinning on a Drop Spindle.

Tuition: $105

Materials: $10

This course is for students 16+.

Your Instructor

Josie Cooke

Josie is enamored with all things craft since childhood, when she attended programs at the local nature center making sumacade and wild blackberry jam with churn butter. In her twenties, an inordinate amount of time was spent in the pursuit of wild edibles and wild wine making, joined shortly thereafter by an insatiable interest for all things baskets. Throughout this, fiber has been the constant companion, a compendium of knowledge and experience on a slow boil. In backwards fashion, from knitting to fiber studies, to growing her own flax, the journey continues. Craft in all forms is the path to a greater connection with the earth, ourselves, and each other, all of which could use greater unity.

Each year she teaches at the Lake Superior Traditional Ways Gathering, and taught/assisted classes as an intern at North House Folk School. Currently, she occasionally renovates turn of the century houses and endeavors to have a life full of learning, teaching, and creating craft.