Master crafter spins her stuff

Mar 25, 2010

Master spinner Beth Abbott of Godfrey demonstrates on her Lendrum spinning wheel

Master spinner Beth Abbott of Godfrey showed off some her skills and the tools of her trade at a recent gathering of the Land o`Lakes Artisans`Guild (LOLAG).

Beth started spinning in 1976 and received her master spinners certificate from Georgian College in 1990. During that time she completed a two-year study of Icelandic sheep and fleece and in 2001 the study was published as a book titled, The Icelandic Fleece: A Fibre for all Reasons.

Beth teaches privately as well as through the Ontario Handweavers and Spinners spinning certificate program, which presently has 45 students enrolled in courses that are running in Haliburton and Belleville. She has also taught various workshops throughout Ontario and western Canada.

Beth calls herself a fibre artist and also works with cloth but a large part of her repertoire includes a wide variety of colourful objects she creates from yarns she spins herself from various materials, which include cottons, silks and exotic fibres like cashmere, alpaca, camel, musk ox, and dog hair. She sometimes incorporates man-made fibres such as sea cell, which is made from seaweed and latte, made from a milk protein, into her yarns.

From her own yarns she weaves or knits a wide variety of colourful clothes and accessories including purses, hats, vests, capes, socks, sweaters and shawls.

Beth began her foray into the arts first as a painter but as she recalled, “I loved it but I was also looking for a more tactile experience and I found it in spinning, where you are constantly handling cloths and fibres.”

The repetitive, rhythmic movements of spinning is another quality she enjoys and finds calming. She also “liked the idea of being able to preserve an ancient skill.”

Tools are an important part of the spinning craft and Beth said, “I love to work with nice tools.” At the LOLAG gathering she brought along a number of fascinating tools. One of particular interest was a charkha, an East Indian horizontal spindle wheel used to spin cotton. Relatively small and light-weight, it folds up into a small case that can be easily transported. Popularized by Gandhi, who fought to keep cotton spinning alive in India, the charkha was designed as an inexpensive and reliable spinning tool that many in India still use to this day.

Beth also demonstrated more typical spinning methods on her Lendrum wheel, an upright double treadle wheel, her “workhorse” as she calls it, produced locally in Odessa by Gord Lendrum. On it she demonstrated the wheel’s well-known versatility and its ability to produce yarns of varying thicknesses and twist.

She also demonstrated a variety of hand spindles; one of her favorites is the "Mongold" spindle, a top whorl spindle made of a wood composite, which she was presented with to test out before it hit the market.

Spinning, like most craft pursuits, requires much time and effort to master, but also provides deep satisfaction and enjoyment. Anyone interested in taking lessons with Beth or joining the Kingston Handloom Weavers and Spinners Guild can contact her at 613-374-3212 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Beth also writes a regular column for the magazine Fibre Focus, which can be found online at ohs.on.ca