HANDSPINNING

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Bette Hochberg springs from a long line of Amish-Mennonite pioneers . . .folks who kept sheep, and spun and wove their own wool as a matter of course. It's little wonder, then, that Bette learned to spin early in life.

But anyone at any age (you, for instance!) who has the will and the patience can learn to handspin. And you won't even need a spinning wheel: A handspindle will do for starters.

Mrs. Hochberg's book, Handspinner's Handbook (from which the following excerpts were chosen), gives simple directions for handling 20 different fibers and for becoming a fast, competent spinner. You have only to follow her instructions to see why the ancient craft of handspinning is far from obsolete, to find-as Bette says-the "great pleasure and satisfaction" that come from "reenacting an activity that's been a part of human life from the beginning".

People have been spinning for at least 7,000 years. The earliest archaeological finds of yarns were in the valley of the Nile. These were linen-like fibers, and early Egyptian wall paintings show the preparation and spinning of flax into linen. About 6,000 years ago in Babylonia and Mesopotamia, sheep were domesticated and wool was spun and traded. For 5,000 years cotton has been grown and spun. China began its silk industry about 2500 B.C. These four fibers-linen, wool, cotton, silksupplied most of man's needs for cloth through the ages.

Spinning is holding a mass of fibers and twisting a few of them as they are pulled from the loose mass. The rhythm is, "First twist, then pull."

You can spin almost anything that is long, thin, and flexible . . . the hair of many animals and the fibers of many plants. It's even possible to sit in the woods and spin dry grasses without any tools. This is fun, butwhile learning-stay with the fibers that people have spun for centuries.

THE HANDSPINDLE

The first form of spinning was twisting by hand, or "thigh spinning". This is still done today by the Chilkat Indians. Then spinners discovered the handspindle: a stick with a weight which spins like a top. As the spindle revolves, the yarn twists, and is then wound around the shaft. Of the 7,000 years that we have known how to spin, almost 6,500 years were spent with only the handspindle.

There are many sizes and styles of handspindles: little needle-like slivers of bamboo weighted with tiny beads of clay, and the long-shafted Navajo spindle with plate-like wooden whorls. It is possible to spin a finer thread on a handspindle than on a wheel. The Dacca muslins of India are woven of spindlespun cotton so fine it measures 250 miles to a pound. Many cultures around the world still use hand spindles. (Editor's note: See Mrs. Hochberg's second book, Handspindles, an instruction manual for this kind of spining.)