Carol shares the story of founding the Valley Friendly Spinner’s Guild
“So I was so shocked, I’d been trying to start a spinner guild, this was 1982 and I didn’t know how. So this woman from the next town, Beth, encouraged, said I had to go to Paula Simmon’s class, so I did. Sixty dollars was a lot of money in that day. I entered at Stowe Flake in Stowe, it’s a lodge, big room. I entered the room with my spinning wheel my basket of fiber and the room had about 30 people, 30 spinners and they each had a wheel and I was shocked. But you know it was the fact of Paula Simmon’s fame and advertisements had been sent out by whoever helped her with that. Maybe an agent, but um, there was a woman with short, white, curly hair and a big big smile. And she said sit beside me, and I did. Her name was Dot Stein, she lived in Burlington on North Street. And I said I’m blown away by all these spinners, where did they come from? Well, I told Dot that I’d been wanting to start a spinner’s guild for a long time, but I hadn’t been successful. She said I’ll help you. I’ll come once a week, every week, and I will basically tell you to get on the phone and try this or that. She did, so she helped me so she deserves credit for founding the Valley Friendly Spinners together with me.”
Carol on her spinning guild as a powerful social support system
“So at the guild meetings, we help each other. There’s so many different kinds of spinning wheels now and in recent years. And they all function similarly but a little different. And you know the world is just full of fiber animals, and so each spinner comes with different fiber because they have different interests. And the fibers are different colors, some work with all natural, some like bright colors. So we come each time with a show and tell, something to work on, and food to share. And we do finger foods and have a little mini potluck, but so we help each other but we expose each other to different kinds of wheels, different information, different fibers, different methods. And for many, many, many of our years I’ve arranged programs invited experts in, one time we had a silk expert. And we meet at each other’s homes, sometimes libraries, or churches or museums public building, sometimes on the lawn, sometimes at a park. So it’s gone through a lot of different, but basically to help each other. And I’ve wrote a history of the guild which is pretty long. I’m happy to share it with you if I have not. But in that, close to the end, I end with sort of a summation of my feelings about the guild, that it’s not just education and sharing, but also human psychological support and social support. One day, we had a meeting here in my shop studio, when it was much more open, it was open! And so we could sit around in a big circle. And I was busy helping someone with moving their wheel or getting some supplies and I felt the group all move toward one of our members. And she was almost crying and she was talking about problems with a daughter or son and their families. And she didn’t know what she was going to do. And everyone pulled in toward her. And it was just so moving to me. I turned around and saw it and sort of then became part of it, and I realized that the guild was more than just education in helping each other with this interest in spinning, but real solid, you know, social and psychological support. So that was that was big to me when I realized that. But you know, sometimes I would be on my knees trying to fix a wheel, so many times I’ve been on my knees at a guild meeting, fixing a wheel or helping someone with a problem. When really, what I needed was to just sit and spin with the others, you know. But I had that role, you know, and people relied on me, and I’m sure it helped me, you know, to feel needed”
Lee on the various fiber communities she participates in
“When I first arrived in Shoreham, I went to Middlebury, and there was a woman there selling Irish knit sweaters. Her name’s Sheila Smith. And she said, oh you like to knit? I just think I had just started spinning, my kids were small. And she said, you must come to Twist O’ Wool. So I did. And it is a long term group, they started in 1979, they meet in Middlebury. And they have dozens of members, I mean, they’ve been going for decades, quite a devoted bunch. And they hand spin and they teach people to spin and they teach people about wool and they, there’s weavers and tons of knitters, so some of my oldest friends in the neighborhood are in that group. I belong to a weavers’ guild in Albany, there is a weavers’ guild in Vermont, it just hasn’t been as convenient for me to meet with them. But I’ve learned a lot from the weavers in Albany. And then the wool festivals are really a great resource. All kinds of products and all kinds of people and all kinds of sheep. So I have a lot of friends there and I just love going to them. I mean I, I enjoy selling at them. But I think I partly I enjoy selling at them because I love just being there its quite, quite exciting. There’s a huge one in New York State down in the town of Rhinebeck and it’s quite thrilling to go there because 10s of 1000s of people go, and they all love to knit. And it’s really quite energizing to go to something like that. Because otherwise it seems like kind of a weird hobby. Have you found people are pretty, like willing to share what they’ve learned? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I think I met one weaver once who didn’t want to divulge where she got her materials or something, that is totally an exception. Most people are really forthcoming and sharing patterns sharing knowledge teaching. It’s not a competitive hobby all all, or a competitive profession. There’s room for everyone.”
Michael on the culture of sharing knowledge
“Vermonters will give you the shirt off their backs as long as they don’t have to talk to you, you know what I mean? That’s kind of like the community of sheep people too, they, they get together once a year, at the Vermont Sheep and Goat Association they get together once a year for their little annual meet. And it’s just this love fest and you have you know, lunch with them, and you listen to a couple speakers and stuff. And then it’s like, okay see you bye, call, if you need anything, they are happy to share, I think any information that they have that might help you, as a fellow Shepherd, be successful. I’ve never seen anybody, you know, claim some proprietary nature over information. And I try to run my mill kind of that same way if, if a customer, after I stopped doing custom processing, if the customer said, God we really love that yarn, but we have to use a different processor, you know, since you’re not doing it, can you maybe tell them what you did? I’m like, I’m happy to share that information. I will tell them how many twists per inch I will tell them, you know, what draft I use, how big, I will tell them everything, tell them everything about that and did on numerous occasions. When I sold the equipment to junction fiber mill, I kept a box, it was indexed, you know alphabetically of every spin run I had done for every customer in 10 years, and it went to them so that they if that customer went to them, which I encourage all my customers to do, they would be able to look that up and see what I did for them.”
Michael on his close relationships with his customers
“I love doing custom processing for people. It just, you know, wore me out basically, physically. And I met some of the nicest most wonderful people. The people that have sheep in Vermont, the average farmer has six, you know, there’s just not, it’s just the way it is in Vermont right now. And they love their, their sheep as much as they would any other family member. And most of them treat them as well as family members, and they have names. And that’s not to say that larger farms, there’s something wrong with larger farms, because I certainly would never say that. I think anybody that’s in livestock stewardship, at any capacity, I think is in it for probably the right reasons, because there’s no money in it ever, there’s just not, you know, you might be able to survive, but nobody’s getting rich off of having sheep, especially for wool, I mean, it just doesn’t happen. So yeah, there’s there’s dozens and dozens of just fantastic people that I’ve met in the state of Vermont and New Hampshire and Massachusetts, and New York and all over the place that just are just so excited to get their yarn back, and it’s just makes it all worth it. You know, all the scouring and all the days in the mill where the humidity is not right. The machines are giving you all kinds of crap. And just when they pick up their yarn, and it’s beautiful, and they love it, it’s just it’s a lot. And the people of the Vermont Sheep and Goat Association, same thing, just like oh my god, they’re just the best people. I can tell you that in the 10 well 12 years now almost that I’ve been in this business, I’ve never ever taken a bad check. Nobody’s ever bounced a check. Nobody’s ever skated on their bill. It’s just, you can trust all of these people implicitly is just amazing. There’s not a better group of people on the planet”
Tammy on her relationship with mill owners
Tammy describing the energy of fiber communities
“So anyway, and then as far as like the fiber artist community, that is a very active and rich community. Those folks are very social generally. They’re very, there’s, it’s a funny, it’s a funny mix because many of the artists are crafters, they are self proclaimed introverts, but at the same time, they’re very social online and they love their fiber festivals. So when you’re at a fiber festival, obviously you’re not being, you’re not able to be an introvert, because it’s a festival and there’s lots of people, but you’re with your people and so it feels good. And so I love meeting all of those folks and spending time with them. They’re enthusiasts and they’re happy and excited about what we’re doing or what they’re doing and they want to share. And many of them are very passionate also about what they’re doing. And I also like sometimes it’s is sometimes I find a lot of passionate and young folks also that like they’re, they care about the environment, they care about the political environment. And I think it’s encouraging to hear those voices and hear those conversations within the world of work that I’m doing.”
Michael on how social media connects him to others
“I see a lot of young knitters on Instagram and the Tik Toks, which I refused, I absolutely refused. I downloaded the app and just went, oh I’m just too old, I’m just too old for that. So I’m not gonna do that. But yeah, Instagram, I love when I first started my Instagram account, I was posting a lot of stuff from the mill. And it was like, that was my watercooler. These were my, the people that commented, these were the people that I went to work with everyday, basically. It was, they were my coworkers it helped me a lot, it helped my business, I think, and it helped just staying sane, when you’re just all alone all day long. And the machines are so loud, that you’ve got hearing protection on eight hours a day, it’s really isolating. But to be able to launch your social media accounts and know that somebody, you know, laughed at something you said or thought your yarn was beautiful. That’s just really encouraging. And I think that use of social media was just God, I just loved it.”