Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Fiber is Soft. Metal is Not.


One of the reasons I like working with fiber is that it is soft. Even the most coarse of wools is softer than many substances around us. And, to me, soft means “safe”. I’m unlikely to hurt myself with yarn.

Metal, on the other hand, is something I need to be cautious around. Knowing this, before I started working regularly with hand cards and hand combs, I got a tetanus shot. Good thing, too, because I regularly get poked by those tines. So I’m clumsy. So sue me…

Well, I may be metal and wire phobic, but I’m happy to report that other spinners and fiber artists are not. Meet Kathi Pecor. She took a couple of my classes at the Wisconsin Sheep & Wool Festival earlier this month. In one of those classes, we played with core-spinning (wrapping fiber around a core yarn). She then took core spinning outside the box. In an email, she told me, “…I applied what I learned to something I saw on the internet-core-spinning with wire as the core. I used 24g wire and some wild glitzy stuff I carded and just spun away-the hardest part is that the stuff doesn't wind up on the bobbin-you have to do it by hand-which isn't all that bad….”

Here’s the picture she sent me.


I asked her what she planned to do with this fiber-wrapped wire. She replied that it might find a place in jewely or book binding. How cool is that! For more, visit her blog.


Over this last weekend, I met another fiber artist who is combining metal and fiber. Her name is Emily Wohlscheid. Her business name is Bricolage Studios. She was a vendor at the Northern Michigan Lamb & Wool Festival
. I was quite intrigued by her jewelry and her orifice hooks. The orifice hooks had tiny bits of fiber encased in plexiglass (I think) and copper. Charming! She has a few examples in her etsy store and she discusses her art work on her blog . Take a look.

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