Spindlicity-an online magazine for handspinners - Calling All Kids, Tweens, Teens & Young Adult Spinners

Calling all Kids, Tweens, Teens, and Young Adult Spinners

How many of us had our first "fiber" project at summer camp, only to remember that time as a static activity that would only be interesting to an 8 year-old but have no meaning for you at 12, 15, 18, or 24? Did we then pick up spinning on our own, married, recently single, or working with children? Was their goal to entertain us while it rained? Was it to produce a potholder to take home proving our outing was "educational"?

Heather (left) and Madison (right) caught in the act of learning

While the people who brought us the craft of fiber arts may have had wonderful intentions of introducing us to something they loved by finding a niche within our own age-group, ultimately the goal was never realized as we all look back at our many missed attempts to "pick-up" spinning, or weaving, or knitting/crochet or other fiber work, only to sigh at "what might have been."

There is a research project underway by the people over at SimpleMarketFarms involving kids, tweens, teens, young adults, and their parents to help understand the connecting threads within fiber arts that touch on this narrow but dynamic age-range of 15 years (with a few on the fringes) and keep fiber arts as a primary interest in their maturing lives.

Dynamic age-range and static activity? As parents, many of us know that our children can grow 5 inches in just one summer. That's not just one size of pants. It's an all over busting-of-the-seams that is not confined to just bodies. They change, as do their interests. From Playmobil to army men and astronauts to the Hardy Boys, axes, pocket-knives and (gasp) girls, the interests of our boys are fairly easy to track. Our girls go from Head-Shoulders-Knees-and-Toes to pinafores & smocking to trees & scuffed knees to heels & strapless bras in what seems too fast a season for us moms. My mother has a story of buying her first strapless bra and dropping by the dime store to pick up the latest paper doll book on the way home. Making felt figures on paper plates with glue and round-ended scissors just isn't interesting to twelve year old. And potholders lose their coolness-factor when a newly voting 18 year-old has been asked to list her favorite hobbies.

Heather

If the recent surge of the popularity of knitting is any sign of the ability to isolate out the enduring qualities of fiber arts, then surely spindling and spinning are not to be relegated to us as adults. But knitting, we argue, is popular nationally, while spinning is really a niche that only appeals to farm people and artsy types. However, bringing spinning up to the surface is not an end in itself. Introduced to farming as adults, Paul and Jeanne Hubbard of SimpleMarketFarms are constantly brining people to fiber arts hoping to bring some of the farm to the suburbs where they now live, taking care of aging parents. So the research of TeenSpin (although it touches the age ranges of 5 to 20, or higher) is aimed at isolating and identifying what it is that is both "hip" and "enduring" about fiber arts and ways to interest and involve youth as they mature and not just at touch-points in their vacationing times.

Currently, the Hubbards have worked with a young woman named Heather out of Arizona, to help her spin and challenge her efforts. Heather has met the challenge to teach her friends and now her friends are going to start a guild, under the umbrella of the Cyber-Guild set up for the Teens at TeenSpin. While they will meet locally, Heather and her friends will also participate across the board in discussions, educational activities with fiber and spinning techniques to weaving and other ideas as they decide them in their group. Heather's mom purchased spindles from SimpleMarketFarms, and it was as the Hubbards visited with Helene while processing her order that Heather's name came up. She was a weaver, not a spinner, but she was a possibility. Well, Heather is not only a spinner now, she is also a happy enabler, who takes her spinning out to volunteering activities and offers lessons on the spot. She graduates this year and spinning is going with her.

Kievan at her mother's wheel

Diana has long been a friend of the Hubbards but now lives states away. After hearing about spinning from the Hubbards, she followed with interest the budding business, and after a visit in 2005, Diana signed up for spinning lessons back home, now owns a few spindles and a Saxony wheel. Two daughters are members of the study, and as homeschooled tweens, the girls both enjoy fiber arts from making their own felted soaps to spinning and knitting/crochet. Pictured here is Kievan, at her mother's Kromski Saxony. Diana is a homeschooling mom who tutors other children and has written much on homeschooling. She says, "I am very pleased that my girls are interested in spinning. This ancient art-form is fun and useful and opens up a range of fiber-related creative possibilities. Spinning also teaches the girls to think about twist, elasticity, texture, directions, tension, ratio, and the mechanics of the wheel." Diana concludes with, "So, just as the small boy who loved and practiced the art of origami never dreamed that he would one day be commissioned to figure out the best way to fold an airbag, the young spinner doesn't know how her unique understanding of twist might be put to use in the future - perhaps she'll be the one to prove "String Theory"!

The TeenSpin research project is open to all kids (boys and girls), tweens, teens, and young adults and while the discussion forum is a closed list (to protect the privacy of the minors) you can gain access to join the study by going to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TeenSpin/. Parents are not only invited, but requested to join if their participant is a younger spinner.