January 3, 2025 • 25 mins
In this episode from 2011, Sasha interviews colorist extraordinaire Deb Menz. Deb is the author of Color in Spinning, which is sadly out of print. It's an amazing book, and if you ever find a used copy of it, snatch it up.
You can find the script for this episode HERE.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:58):
Hello there, beloved Sheepspotter. I'm taking a little break from creating new
episodes right now, but today I'm sharing a segment from my first spinning podcast,
Spin Doctor, for your listening pleasure.
In this episode from 2011, I interview colorist extraordinaire Deb Menz.
(01:20):
Deb is the author of Color in Spinning, which is sadly out of print.
It is an amazing book, and if you ever find a used copy of it, snatch it up.
Deb taught me to dye wool, and there's a pretty direct line from the class I
took with her in 2011 to Sheepspot.
(01:40):
I am forever in her debt, and I really hope that you enjoy this episode.
I had a chance to sit down with Deb Menz for a few minutes after my class with her ended.
Among our topics, how she assuages her students' color anxieties,
talking about color using food and music analogies, her decision to stop traveling to teach,
(02:05):
how well or not the spinning community supports its teachers,
and why art education is not a luxury.
I recorded this in the classroom at the spinning loft while folks were coming
and going, so you'll hear some background noise, including the famous spinning loft doorbells.
(02:26):
Okay. Okay. So, so here's my opening question, opening gambit. Okay.
Why are people so afraid of making color choices?
Art teachers, grade school art teachers. They tell you, they tell kids that there's too many rules.
I was an art mom when my kids were little, and we almost got into a physical
(02:51):
fight with the art teacher because of different projects and things that he said.
And my children were strong-willed children.
And they would come home and say, Mom, he said that I can't use blue and green
together because they don't go together.
And so my retort was, well, just tell them they're analogous colors.
(03:14):
It's a color relationship. It's all right.
And she flunked that one. So my son coming through three years later thought
that he was going to skip it as far as he was going to outsmart him.
He was going to use black and white.
And he told him, no, those aren't colors. You can't use that at all.
So my son just chose not to do it at all.
(03:34):
Okay. So there you go. Art teachers. Art teachers. Is there anything else, do you think?
I think our society makes people believe that you have to be a famous artist to be creative.
And so our society in general makes the assumption everyone is uncreative and
(03:55):
only gives special snowflake status to a gifted few.
And gifted is in quotation marks. Right. It's whoever that particular art teacher
that didn't know what an analogous color was choosing who he thought was the special snowflake.
Right. So if you're not a special snowflake and you're in, say,
someone is in a special snowflake.
(04:16):
Or not chosen a special snowflake. Hasn't been chosen as a special snowflake
and is in your class, say, your painted rovings class.
How do you how do you help the
timid ones start to make those choices
about combining oh sure because i think that's the thing oh it's totally people
(04:37):
out it's a confidence it's not that they can't do it they just don't think they
can do it and they're afraid i don't know what they're afraid of that what's
going to happen you get something you don't like but there's no color god that's
going to come down and get you and so it's just a matter of having confidence.
To use the colors.
So I get people to use small amounts of color, small numbers of color.
And we work with monochromatic.
(04:58):
Then we get out to analogous, which are a little wider wedge of the pie.
And then we just work around the color wheel.
And by that time, they know what color relationships are. And that's all it's about.
There are no rights and wrong. It's just what people find aesthetically
pleasing so there there's no
rules none okay
(05:19):
because i think maybe maybe a casual
glance at say color and spinning and the um the chapter on on color schemes
you know the at the beginning the one on um color harmonies on color harmonies
thank you that that might make people think that they're home rules?
(05:42):
All that is, is guidelines that if you want a predictable result,
you can use those harmonies.
And those aren't rules. Those are just, if you want a certain kind of result,
say with complementary colors, you want to intensify the two hue families.
So you pick a specific hue family to have that happen.
Doesn't mean that's the only way you do it.
(06:04):
A lot of my work isn't in color harmonies anymore. I embellish it.
I might start with one and then I keep going until it seems right to me.
So that's like a starting off point. Okay.
I think another thing, I mean, I've had my own color anxieties.
And I'm really just talking about myself, shockingly, for people who have listened to the show before.
(06:29):
Because really, all I do is talk about myself.
And I think for me, I started out working in polymer, in polymer clay.
And the big color person in polymer clay is called Maggie Maggio.
I don't know if you know her stuff, but I think she's a total genius and she's
(06:50):
great at teaching this stuff.
And the thing that she said to me in a class that I took with her once was that
the first step is figuring out what you like.
And I suspect that lots of people don't really, like they might think,
oh, I have a favorite color, but they haven't thought, oh, like I prefer complementary
(07:14):
schemes to analogous schemes.
Or I prefer saturated to desaturated.
So there's that element too about figuring out what your own preferences are in that way.
I think for, yeah, for spinning and for what we do, I think that knowing what
(07:34):
you don't like is just as important because I think a lot of people say they don't like barber pole.
But if you put barber pole with 10 colors, it doesn't read as barber pole,
it reads as dots of color.
And barber pole is basically a difference in value of two colors.
And the bigger the value difference, the more barber poles.
(07:59):
And so by adding more hue families and adding more colors to the mix and deciding
what kind of value contrast you like, that is really important because what
you see from a distance is the value contrast or not contrast.
So you might like minor keys, which is just ways to describe values you put
(08:20):
together or major keys, which uses a really wide value range.
Okay. So explain that a little bit more because, and you can say hue because
on my show, we talk about hue's. We talk about hue's values and saturation.
Okay. I told everybody that we're just going to have to get on board for that
little bit of talking about color
(08:41):
theory at the beginning, because then I would have a way to describe.
Well, it's just a language. Right, exactly. It's just a language.
And for me, Hugh goes with the whole wedge of the pie on a color wheel.
Right. So it's like somebody's last name.
So a Hugh family of green would be the last name men's, per se.
(09:01):
And within there, there is Kelly Green.
Pine green, forest green, mint green. And so those would be a first name.
So the description of the color within the hue.
And so that's how I distinguish it.
So that's, yeah, that's a good analogy. And so, you know, that's one of the
few non-food analogies I have.
(09:23):
I love food and it just, it always reminds me of something.
So back, meanwhile, back to value.
All value is, it has nothing to do with the color itself or hue itself.
It has to do with its relative lightness or darkness when compared to a black and white scale.
So it's like looking at life through a black and white TV or colors copying
(09:47):
your life on a black and white copier.
Okay, so you've taken out the hue of it. And when you see something that blends
really well, that all of those grays kind of mush mushed together,
that means that all of those hues or colors were in the same value range.
Okay. And you would call that a minor key. Minor key. And it's just like music.
(10:10):
Minor keys might be really quiet.
They might be real mood, but they're very specific.
Major keys use from very dark to very light.
So it's like thinking of a big band and that you have this whole loud,
raucous thing going on and major keys to me are more like that. Okay, that makes sense.
(10:34):
And so I try to give it analogies that people can relate to.
With music. With music or food or something. Or family. Life,
yeah. Yes. Okay. Yeah. That sounds good.
So you're going to stop teaching, Deb Menz. You're sort of going to start teaching.
(10:54):
Let's talk about that a little bit because people might be.
Well, they've heard rumors of that for quite some time, and I've threatened
it and backed off and threatened and backed off.
But I never had an alternate thing to do while I was at home. Not teaching.
And now I do. So I will teach from my studio. I'll be glad to have people come see me in Wisconsin.
(11:17):
But I think I'm putting my suitcase away unless I'm going to see my kids.
And I have kids on both coasts. And so that's a major trip.
And I like being home with my dogs and my cats and Buzz.
Yeah. Well, just having taken the class this weekend and seeing how much I am
now looking and how much stuff I've brought with her.
(11:39):
And it's, I mean, it's, you're basically having to reconstruct your studio in
somebody else's space every time.
And the spaces, as we've talked about, can be pretty unpredictable in terms
of size and facilities and quality of the electrical current and all that stuff. Absolutely.
(11:59):
And so it's just, you're not only teaching the two or three days at the workshop,
but I usually have two or three weeks of prep before the workshop,
and then that at the workshop, then traveling home and unpacking it all.
So a three-day workshop isn't just three days for me.
It usually encompasses three to four weeks.
(12:21):
That makes sense. It's ordering the fibers. It's making sure that the formulas
are right for some classes, making sure that I have the right things,
packaging them, doing handouts.
Because I tweak the handouts for each workshop that it might have a date from
10 years ago, but that just means that's when I started teaching that particular
class. And I edit from there.
(12:43):
So with cutting out the travel, you think that having people to the studio is
probably going to make things a lot better?
Well, that means I can take a weekly class, say yoga class, continuing education,
cooking class that meets for eight weeks.
I might actually be able to go to all eight weeks, which that's what I'm looking
forward to, that I can get into a routine.
(13:06):
And a friend of mine, Sarah Sweat, would call it her dailiness in life.
And that's what I'm looking for. I would like to have a really,
really boring daily life, which things come up so it doesn't happen.
So if you aim for that, then, you know, I'm okay in the middle somewhere. Exactly.
And people can come to me and that means I still have my evenings and my nights
(13:27):
and stuff and they can be at the studio after I'm gone during,
you know, the evening. That's fine. Yeah.
I think it's amazing that you've been able to make as much work as you have
given, you know, given that because for me, like for me in my writing life,
for example, if I don't If I don't have a really boring daily life,
(13:49):
I don't get very much done.
I'm always in crisis mode. I have a deadline. It has to get done.
And so you work like crazy for a period of time. Then you're burnt out. You do nothing.
If I get two or three pieces done a year, that's a lot.
I had a solo show last year, and I worked night and day for four months.
(14:09):
I mean, I was working 16-hour days. Yeah.
In the middle, I did have one workshop that I had to do that I took things and
I worked in the evening on the airplane in the airport.
And I really don't want to do that anymore.
I want to go play like everybody. You know, I want this to be my hobby sometimes.
(14:30):
Right. So the sweater that I've been spending four years knitting is,
I'm going to wear it this year. This is it.
That sounds really exciting. Are you, did you spin this sweater?
Oh, I sure did. I got stuff at different conferences and I didn't have enough of any one thing.
So I lined it all up and have, it's a plied yarn, which is highly unusual for me. It's a two-ply yarn.
(14:57):
And it's just a real quiet, for me, quiet, all cool colors with some bright
accents and a cardigan sweater that I can wear all the time.
Excellent. So one thing that you and I have been sort of talking about fairly
consistently this weekend is the effectiveness of the spinning community,
(15:24):
if we can call it that,
at supporting its artists and supporting
the people who are really making… Supplying our souls with stuff.
Supplying our souls with stuff. Yes. And...
(15:44):
I wonder if you just want to maybe talk about that a little bit.
And kind of, I mean, I think most of my listeners, well, I think my listeners
have a really broad range of spinning experience.
Some of them have been spinning for years and years and years.
Some of them have been spinning for, you know, less than six months.
Okay. They are, I think they probably tend to be sort of in my demographic,
(16:08):
but I also have a lot of younger listeners and a lot of older listeners.
They're all over the world. And I wonder if maybe we could talk a little bit
about how individual spinners can think about keeping the sort of ecosystem
of spinning healthy. Okay.
(16:30):
It's a complex system. We're a small pond in the grand scheme of things that
out of hobbies, there are not huge numbers of spinners worldwide. line.
So we're a small group of people that know each other pretty well or have heard of each other.
(16:50):
It's wonderful in this day and age to be able to work with the electronics as
far as the internet and the different things that are there,
that it makes that small world come together and be even more close.
But I think that in your community, it's really important within your spinning
group that you're working with locally, that you support the people that provide services for you.
(17:16):
I was a shop owner at one point, and I think it's real important to patronize
the people that help you out because I know I like to look at books first.
I like to feel the equipment first or feel the fibers.
And if I can get it locally, that's my first rule of thumb.
(17:38):
I know it's really convenient at three in the morning if you can't sleep and
you're wanting to buy fibers or you think you've got to have it right then.
Okay, feed the urge. It's okay.
But overall, remember that that person that stocks lots of fleeces in their
garage or wheels or whatever,
(17:59):
that you've got to keep them there and you've got to help them or they cannot
afford to be there to support you.
They're the people that are there that you can ask questions with. They're the people.
And if you're not there, then you have to be satisfied with pictures on the internet and words.
And that's not personal enough. We're a touchy feely group.
You have to have eye to eye, touchy feel, and you can't lose that part of our
(18:24):
spinning community. I think that's important. Yeah.
Well, so how does that apply to teaching and the way that we treat our teachers?
How does it... Well... Oh, you got me stumped on that one.
How do we treat our teachers? Well, um...
You have to support your local teachers. You do? Absolutely.
(18:45):
I mean, that's all part of the balance.
And the people that do travel nationally, be kind to them.
Bring in donuts. Yeah, make sure we have some, you know, yeah,
bring in some food once in a while, you know. Throw some caffeine.
No, you just have to be nice. We're humans, too.
(19:08):
If you'd like it, they'd like it. It's okay. We have low expectations.
Oh, and I wish, I want you to have, be able to have higher.
Well, I don't feel like I need to be a diva. Are you kidding?
No, no, no. That's not what I mean.
That's not what I mean. Although the crown is here and I could put it on.
It's very sparkly. It's a Miss America crown, I swear.
(19:30):
It is every six year old girl's dream. Yeah.
Well, I think, you know, one of the things about going, I went to Madrona for
the first time this year. Oh, okay.
I've taught there. And I actually ended up, Sally Melville was on my flight.
So we ended up taking a taxi together because our flight was really late and
we got in and we missed the shuttle and whatever.
(19:52):
And we were both just tired and hungry and fed up and we wanted to get to our beds.
And so we ended up splitting a cab, which was great. And it was clear from the
way Sally talked about Madrona in particular, and I had a class with J.C.
Boggs, and from the way she talked about it, that Madrona treats teachers pretty well.
(20:16):
Oh, yeah, they do. Yeah. And...
I have to say that made me feel really good as a person who was giving Madrona
my money to take these classes to know that you guys were being treated well.
And I think that's something that people who take classes at retreats and stuff
really need to be thinking and asking. Well, yeah, it's the time that our fees
(20:39):
are not necessarily just for those six hours.
That you're paying for the downtime, the packing time, the everything else that
goes in between that if you think of those daily fees as spreading out for those
three weeks it took, then that puts it in a totally different picture.
And that I know that at craft schools, that I understand they're not-for-profit
(21:05):
and under budget constraints, but not all schools pay a fair living wage.
And it's the same way probably in other industries, but I know that crafts are
particularly vulnerable,
that they assume that the women, and it's mostly women that teach the spinning
classes, are being supported by a spouse or a partner, and that we do this just for the fun of it.
(21:32):
Well, yeah, we love what we do, but we also have mortgages to pay. Right.
And this isn't just fluff, that we really do this very seriously and passionately.
And a lot of us do it because we absolutely love it, love what we're doing,
and want to spread the word, but that's all part of it. You still gotta have
a heart over your head. Yeah.
(21:55):
It saddens me. Well, my father was an artist, and he was poor his whole life,
and he died more, and it was because we live in a culture that doesn't value artists. That,
Art programs all over the country are being cut because people don't think art is necessary.
(22:17):
And art in kids is incredibly necessary because they can learn numbers,
they can learn the internet, they can learn how to read, but if they don't learn
how to think creatively, we're never going to have leaders in 20 years.
That art does that, music does that, and kids need to be able to think more
(22:38):
than linearly And if that's lost,
we're, as a country at whole, are going to be losing more than just the art and the music.
We'll be losing a whole way of life. Right, right.
Have you ever heard of Howard Gardner?
He's an education. He's on the education faculty at Harvard.
(23:01):
And he was the person who posited that there are multiple kinds of intelligence.
So there's verbal intelligence and there's mathematical intelligence.
There's also musical and kinesthetic.
He has, I think, nine of them. Okay.
And, and my father, who was a sculptor, he was a stone carver.
(23:23):
He actually went and did a master's degree in education at Harvard with Howard Gardner.
And because Howard Gardner got really, really interested in arts education.
Okay. And the reason is that the arts touch on seven of those intelligences.
No kidding. It's an incredibly efficient way to teach people how to think.
(23:44):
It is. And it may be the most efficient way to teach people how to think.
And so that's the thing that they're cutting.
It seems like, you know, doesn't seem logical, does it? No, no.
And I don't know. Do you have anything else?
(24:04):
No, I just, I feel very lucky that, or very fortunate that I've been able to
be in touch with so many adults that weren't in touch with that part of themselves.
And it is so much fun and so gratifying to see the aha moment and know that
they're going to go and do something different than they did before they met me.
(24:25):
And to me, that's it. And that's going to be the hardest part for me to leave.
So, you know, it's not that I don't want to teach.
I just can't be everywhere for everybody all the time. At once.
Yeah. I finally realized that.
Well, I think that's good for you. Maybe bad for us.
(24:46):
But I think there
might be a little spin doctor trip to the dead man's
studio sometime in the spring i think i'll
be saying more about that later um thank you so much deb it's i had a great
time this weekend i learned so much and i'm gonna be dying my actual ass off
yay i have i will have no ass because of the ass ones okay i i want to see those colors. Okay.
(25:15):
Thank you so much. You are so welcome.
Hello there, beloved Sheepspotter. I'm taking a little break from creating new
episodes right now, but today I'm sharing a segment from my first spinning podcast,
Spin Doctor, for your listening pleasure.
In this episode from 2011, I interview colorist extraordinaire Deb Menz.
(01:20):
Deb is the author of Color in Spinning, which is sadly out of print.
It is an amazing book, and if you ever find a used copy of it, snatch it up.
Deb taught me to dye wool, and there's a pretty direct line from the class I
took with her in 2011 to Sheepspot.
(01:40):
I am forever in her debt, and I really hope that you enjoy this episode.
I had a chance to sit down with Deb Menz for a few minutes after my class with her ended.
Among our topics, how she assuages her students' color anxieties,
talking about color using food and music analogies, her decision to stop traveling to teach,
(02:05):
how well or not the spinning community supports its teachers,
and why art education is not a luxury.
I recorded this in the classroom at the spinning loft while folks were coming
and going, so you'll hear some background noise, including the famous spinning loft doorbells.
(02:26):
Okay. Okay. So, so here's my opening question, opening gambit. Okay.
Why are people so afraid of making color choices?
Art teachers, grade school art teachers. They tell you, they tell kids that there's too many rules.
I was an art mom when my kids were little, and we almost got into a physical
(02:51):
fight with the art teacher because of different projects and things that he said.
And my children were strong-willed children.
And they would come home and say, Mom, he said that I can't use blue and green
together because they don't go together.
And so my retort was, well, just tell them they're analogous colors.
(03:14):
It's a color relationship. It's all right.
And she flunked that one. So my son coming through three years later thought
that he was going to skip it as far as he was going to outsmart him.
He was going to use black and white.
And he told him, no, those aren't colors. You can't use that at all.
So my son just chose not to do it at all.
(03:34):
Okay. So there you go. Art teachers. Art teachers. Is there anything else, do you think?
I think our society makes people believe that you have to be a famous artist to be creative.
And so our society in general makes the assumption everyone is uncreative and
(03:55):
only gives special snowflake status to a gifted few.
And gifted is in quotation marks. Right. It's whoever that particular art teacher
that didn't know what an analogous color was choosing who he thought was the special snowflake.
Right. So if you're not a special snowflake and you're in, say,
someone is in a special snowflake.
(04:16):
Or not chosen a special snowflake. Hasn't been chosen as a special snowflake
and is in your class, say, your painted rovings class.
How do you how do you help the
timid ones start to make those choices
about combining oh sure because i think that's the thing oh it's totally people
(04:37):
out it's a confidence it's not that they can't do it they just don't think they
can do it and they're afraid i don't know what they're afraid of that what's
going to happen you get something you don't like but there's no color god that's
going to come down and get you and so it's just a matter of having confidence.
To use the colors.
So I get people to use small amounts of color, small numbers of color.
And we work with monochromatic.
(04:58):
Then we get out to analogous, which are a little wider wedge of the pie.
And then we just work around the color wheel.
And by that time, they know what color relationships are. And that's all it's about.
There are no rights and wrong. It's just what people find aesthetically
pleasing so there there's no
rules none okay
(05:19):
because i think maybe maybe a casual
glance at say color and spinning and the um the chapter on on color schemes
you know the at the beginning the one on um color harmonies on color harmonies
thank you that that might make people think that they're home rules?
(05:42):
All that is, is guidelines that if you want a predictable result,
you can use those harmonies.
And those aren't rules. Those are just, if you want a certain kind of result,
say with complementary colors, you want to intensify the two hue families.
So you pick a specific hue family to have that happen.
Doesn't mean that's the only way you do it.
(06:04):
A lot of my work isn't in color harmonies anymore. I embellish it.
I might start with one and then I keep going until it seems right to me.
So that's like a starting off point. Okay.
I think another thing, I mean, I've had my own color anxieties.
And I'm really just talking about myself, shockingly, for people who have listened to the show before.
(06:29):
Because really, all I do is talk about myself.
And I think for me, I started out working in polymer, in polymer clay.
And the big color person in polymer clay is called Maggie Maggio.
I don't know if you know her stuff, but I think she's a total genius and she's
(06:50):
great at teaching this stuff.
And the thing that she said to me in a class that I took with her once was that
the first step is figuring out what you like.
And I suspect that lots of people don't really, like they might think,
oh, I have a favorite color, but they haven't thought, oh, like I prefer complementary
(07:14):
schemes to analogous schemes.
Or I prefer saturated to desaturated.
So there's that element too about figuring out what your own preferences are in that way.
I think for, yeah, for spinning and for what we do, I think that knowing what
(07:34):
you don't like is just as important because I think a lot of people say they don't like barber pole.
But if you put barber pole with 10 colors, it doesn't read as barber pole,
it reads as dots of color.
And barber pole is basically a difference in value of two colors.
And the bigger the value difference, the more barber poles.
(07:59):
And so by adding more hue families and adding more colors to the mix and deciding
what kind of value contrast you like, that is really important because what
you see from a distance is the value contrast or not contrast.
So you might like minor keys, which is just ways to describe values you put
(08:20):
together or major keys, which uses a really wide value range.
Okay. So explain that a little bit more because, and you can say hue because
on my show, we talk about hue's. We talk about hue's values and saturation.
Okay. I told everybody that we're just going to have to get on board for that
little bit of talking about color
(08:41):
theory at the beginning, because then I would have a way to describe.
Well, it's just a language. Right, exactly. It's just a language.
And for me, Hugh goes with the whole wedge of the pie on a color wheel.
Right. So it's like somebody's last name.
So a Hugh family of green would be the last name men's, per se.
(09:01):
And within there, there is Kelly Green.
Pine green, forest green, mint green. And so those would be a first name.
So the description of the color within the hue.
And so that's how I distinguish it.
So that's, yeah, that's a good analogy. And so, you know, that's one of the
few non-food analogies I have.
(09:23):
I love food and it just, it always reminds me of something.
So back, meanwhile, back to value.
All value is, it has nothing to do with the color itself or hue itself.
It has to do with its relative lightness or darkness when compared to a black and white scale.
So it's like looking at life through a black and white TV or colors copying
(09:47):
your life on a black and white copier.
Okay, so you've taken out the hue of it. And when you see something that blends
really well, that all of those grays kind of mush mushed together,
that means that all of those hues or colors were in the same value range.
Okay. And you would call that a minor key. Minor key. And it's just like music.
(10:10):
Minor keys might be really quiet.
They might be real mood, but they're very specific.
Major keys use from very dark to very light.
So it's like thinking of a big band and that you have this whole loud,
raucous thing going on and major keys to me are more like that. Okay, that makes sense.
(10:34):
And so I try to give it analogies that people can relate to.
With music. With music or food or something. Or family. Life,
yeah. Yes. Okay. Yeah. That sounds good.
So you're going to stop teaching, Deb Menz. You're sort of going to start teaching.
(10:54):
Let's talk about that a little bit because people might be.
Well, they've heard rumors of that for quite some time, and I've threatened
it and backed off and threatened and backed off.
But I never had an alternate thing to do while I was at home. Not teaching.
And now I do. So I will teach from my studio. I'll be glad to have people come see me in Wisconsin.
(11:17):
But I think I'm putting my suitcase away unless I'm going to see my kids.
And I have kids on both coasts. And so that's a major trip.
And I like being home with my dogs and my cats and Buzz.
Yeah. Well, just having taken the class this weekend and seeing how much I am
now looking and how much stuff I've brought with her.
(11:39):
And it's, I mean, it's, you're basically having to reconstruct your studio in
somebody else's space every time.
And the spaces, as we've talked about, can be pretty unpredictable in terms
of size and facilities and quality of the electrical current and all that stuff. Absolutely.
(11:59):
And so it's just, you're not only teaching the two or three days at the workshop,
but I usually have two or three weeks of prep before the workshop,
and then that at the workshop, then traveling home and unpacking it all.
So a three-day workshop isn't just three days for me.
It usually encompasses three to four weeks.
(12:21):
That makes sense. It's ordering the fibers. It's making sure that the formulas
are right for some classes, making sure that I have the right things,
packaging them, doing handouts.
Because I tweak the handouts for each workshop that it might have a date from
10 years ago, but that just means that's when I started teaching that particular
class. And I edit from there.
(12:43):
So with cutting out the travel, you think that having people to the studio is
probably going to make things a lot better?
Well, that means I can take a weekly class, say yoga class, continuing education,
cooking class that meets for eight weeks.
I might actually be able to go to all eight weeks, which that's what I'm looking
forward to, that I can get into a routine.
(13:06):
And a friend of mine, Sarah Sweat, would call it her dailiness in life.
And that's what I'm looking for. I would like to have a really,
really boring daily life, which things come up so it doesn't happen.
So if you aim for that, then, you know, I'm okay in the middle somewhere. Exactly.
And people can come to me and that means I still have my evenings and my nights
(13:27):
and stuff and they can be at the studio after I'm gone during,
you know, the evening. That's fine. Yeah.
I think it's amazing that you've been able to make as much work as you have
given, you know, given that because for me, like for me in my writing life,
for example, if I don't If I don't have a really boring daily life,
(13:49):
I don't get very much done.
I'm always in crisis mode. I have a deadline. It has to get done.
And so you work like crazy for a period of time. Then you're burnt out. You do nothing.
If I get two or three pieces done a year, that's a lot.
I had a solo show last year, and I worked night and day for four months.
(14:09):
I mean, I was working 16-hour days. Yeah.
In the middle, I did have one workshop that I had to do that I took things and
I worked in the evening on the airplane in the airport.
And I really don't want to do that anymore.
I want to go play like everybody. You know, I want this to be my hobby sometimes.
(14:30):
Right. So the sweater that I've been spending four years knitting is,
I'm going to wear it this year. This is it.
That sounds really exciting. Are you, did you spin this sweater?
Oh, I sure did. I got stuff at different conferences and I didn't have enough of any one thing.
So I lined it all up and have, it's a plied yarn, which is highly unusual for me. It's a two-ply yarn.
(14:57):
And it's just a real quiet, for me, quiet, all cool colors with some bright
accents and a cardigan sweater that I can wear all the time.
Excellent. So one thing that you and I have been sort of talking about fairly
consistently this weekend is the effectiveness of the spinning community,
(15:24):
if we can call it that,
at supporting its artists and supporting
the people who are really making… Supplying our souls with stuff.
Supplying our souls with stuff. Yes. And...
(15:44):
I wonder if you just want to maybe talk about that a little bit.
And kind of, I mean, I think most of my listeners, well, I think my listeners
have a really broad range of spinning experience.
Some of them have been spinning for years and years and years.
Some of them have been spinning for, you know, less than six months.
Okay. They are, I think they probably tend to be sort of in my demographic,
(16:08):
but I also have a lot of younger listeners and a lot of older listeners.
They're all over the world. And I wonder if maybe we could talk a little bit
about how individual spinners can think about keeping the sort of ecosystem
of spinning healthy. Okay.
(16:30):
It's a complex system. We're a small pond in the grand scheme of things that
out of hobbies, there are not huge numbers of spinners worldwide. line.
So we're a small group of people that know each other pretty well or have heard of each other.
(16:50):
It's wonderful in this day and age to be able to work with the electronics as
far as the internet and the different things that are there,
that it makes that small world come together and be even more close.
But I think that in your community, it's really important within your spinning
group that you're working with locally, that you support the people that provide services for you.
(17:16):
I was a shop owner at one point, and I think it's real important to patronize
the people that help you out because I know I like to look at books first.
I like to feel the equipment first or feel the fibers.
And if I can get it locally, that's my first rule of thumb.
(17:38):
I know it's really convenient at three in the morning if you can't sleep and
you're wanting to buy fibers or you think you've got to have it right then.
Okay, feed the urge. It's okay.
But overall, remember that that person that stocks lots of fleeces in their
garage or wheels or whatever,
(17:59):
that you've got to keep them there and you've got to help them or they cannot
afford to be there to support you.
They're the people that are there that you can ask questions with. They're the people.
And if you're not there, then you have to be satisfied with pictures on the internet and words.
And that's not personal enough. We're a touchy feely group.
You have to have eye to eye, touchy feel, and you can't lose that part of our
(18:24):
spinning community. I think that's important. Yeah.
Well, so how does that apply to teaching and the way that we treat our teachers?
How does it... Well... Oh, you got me stumped on that one.
How do we treat our teachers? Well, um...
You have to support your local teachers. You do? Absolutely.
(18:45):
I mean, that's all part of the balance.
And the people that do travel nationally, be kind to them.
Bring in donuts. Yeah, make sure we have some, you know, yeah,
bring in some food once in a while, you know. Throw some caffeine.
No, you just have to be nice. We're humans, too.
(19:08):
If you'd like it, they'd like it. It's okay. We have low expectations.
Oh, and I wish, I want you to have, be able to have higher.
Well, I don't feel like I need to be a diva. Are you kidding?
No, no, no. That's not what I mean.
That's not what I mean. Although the crown is here and I could put it on.
It's very sparkly. It's a Miss America crown, I swear.
(19:30):
It is every six year old girl's dream. Yeah.
Well, I think, you know, one of the things about going, I went to Madrona for
the first time this year. Oh, okay.
I've taught there. And I actually ended up, Sally Melville was on my flight.
So we ended up taking a taxi together because our flight was really late and
we got in and we missed the shuttle and whatever.
(19:52):
And we were both just tired and hungry and fed up and we wanted to get to our beds.
And so we ended up splitting a cab, which was great. And it was clear from the
way Sally talked about Madrona in particular, and I had a class with J.C.
Boggs, and from the way she talked about it, that Madrona treats teachers pretty well.
(20:16):
Oh, yeah, they do. Yeah. And...
I have to say that made me feel really good as a person who was giving Madrona
my money to take these classes to know that you guys were being treated well.
And I think that's something that people who take classes at retreats and stuff
really need to be thinking and asking. Well, yeah, it's the time that our fees
(20:39):
are not necessarily just for those six hours.
That you're paying for the downtime, the packing time, the everything else that
goes in between that if you think of those daily fees as spreading out for those
three weeks it took, then that puts it in a totally different picture.
And that I know that at craft schools, that I understand they're not-for-profit
(21:05):
and under budget constraints, but not all schools pay a fair living wage.
And it's the same way probably in other industries, but I know that crafts are
particularly vulnerable,
that they assume that the women, and it's mostly women that teach the spinning
classes, are being supported by a spouse or a partner, and that we do this just for the fun of it.
(21:32):
Well, yeah, we love what we do, but we also have mortgages to pay. Right.
And this isn't just fluff, that we really do this very seriously and passionately.
And a lot of us do it because we absolutely love it, love what we're doing,
and want to spread the word, but that's all part of it. You still gotta have
a heart over your head. Yeah.
(21:55):
It saddens me. Well, my father was an artist, and he was poor his whole life,
and he died more, and it was because we live in a culture that doesn't value artists. That,
Art programs all over the country are being cut because people don't think art is necessary.
(22:17):
And art in kids is incredibly necessary because they can learn numbers,
they can learn the internet, they can learn how to read, but if they don't learn
how to think creatively, we're never going to have leaders in 20 years.
That art does that, music does that, and kids need to be able to think more
(22:38):
than linearly And if that's lost,
we're, as a country at whole, are going to be losing more than just the art and the music.
We'll be losing a whole way of life. Right, right.
Have you ever heard of Howard Gardner?
He's an education. He's on the education faculty at Harvard.
(23:01):
And he was the person who posited that there are multiple kinds of intelligence.
So there's verbal intelligence and there's mathematical intelligence.
There's also musical and kinesthetic.
He has, I think, nine of them. Okay.
And, and my father, who was a sculptor, he was a stone carver.
(23:23):
He actually went and did a master's degree in education at Harvard with Howard Gardner.
And because Howard Gardner got really, really interested in arts education.
Okay. And the reason is that the arts touch on seven of those intelligences.
No kidding. It's an incredibly efficient way to teach people how to think.
(23:44):
It is. And it may be the most efficient way to teach people how to think.
And so that's the thing that they're cutting.
It seems like, you know, doesn't seem logical, does it? No, no.
And I don't know. Do you have anything else?
(24:04):
No, I just, I feel very lucky that, or very fortunate that I've been able to
be in touch with so many adults that weren't in touch with that part of themselves.
And it is so much fun and so gratifying to see the aha moment and know that
they're going to go and do something different than they did before they met me.
(24:25):
And to me, that's it. And that's going to be the hardest part for me to leave.
So, you know, it's not that I don't want to teach.
I just can't be everywhere for everybody all the time. At once.
Yeah. I finally realized that.
Well, I think that's good for you. Maybe bad for us.
(24:46):
But I think there
might be a little spin doctor trip to the dead man's
studio sometime in the spring i think i'll
be saying more about that later um thank you so much deb it's i had a great
time this weekend i learned so much and i'm gonna be dying my actual ass off
yay i have i will have no ass because of the ass ones okay i i want to see those colors. Okay.
(25:15):
Thank you so much. You are so welcome.
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