Knowledge Acquisition

Ken bought me some books for my birthday. One on Celtic Design has not yet arrived but the others are really cool. The first one is Spinning in the Old Way by Priscilla A. Gibson-Roberts.

She's kind of funny in how she starts out stating that she is very opinionated and then proceeds to prove it. I like a lot of what she recommends but I do feel comfortable enough to decide for myself whether or not it should be spinning "LAW". Fact is, I'm learning pretty quickly, that there are very few spinning laws so long as your fiber stays together and looks good knitted or woven up.

He also bought me The Whole Craft of Spinning: From the Raw Material to the Finished Yarn by Carol Kroll. This is a basic book with some advanced information and includes a lot of information about spinning wheels. She does a good job of laying out the information we all need. I like that she suggests using some unusual fibers like dandelion fluff and feathers.

He also ordered Diet for a New America by John Robbins. I haven't started reading this one yet but I am a little concerned that when I do read it, my family is going to undergo some radical diet changes. I may hold off for a while.

Then I ordered a whole flock of books! I was very bad but if I'm going to try and teach others how to do this, I need to know something about what I teach... right?

So I got:

A Dyer's Garden: From Plant to Pot Growing Dyes for Natural Fibers by Rita Buchanan. This one fits in nicely with my herb and flower gardens and all the wild stuff we have growing around here. In any case, there are a lot of yellows available to me and I think I will have to plant woad again for some blues.

Spinning Designer Yarns by Diane Varney. This is the book that is going to give me permission to do just about anything!

Spin It: Making Yarn from Scratch by Lee Raven is a thin book but nicely illustrated and offers patterns for several things I can make with my homespun.

Finally, I got A Handspindle Treasury: 20 Years of Spinning Wisdom from Spin-Off Magazine edited by A number of folks from Spin-Off with an introduction by Priscilla Gibson-Roberts. This book, too, contains some patterns but most importantly discusses a wide variety of different kinds of spindles and describes well how to make them for myself and use them. This was a good purchase.

Wondering if anyone out there who might read this blog from time to time can recommend additional books I should get?