Kismet: spinning dreams

I’ve been researching spinning. Not that I’ve ever had a yen to spin. No, I’m quite content to support the labor of other spinners. And I’ve promised my family I would not acquire any more equipment for any more media. Period.

What happened was that I crossed paths with this image of spun newspaper. Kismet. I’m still reeling (no pun intended, I think). What is this? Greetje van Tiem‘s “Indruk” project, her contribution to the Design Academy Eindhoven graduation show. Van Tiem is a recent graduate from the academy’s Man and Leisure department, has been spinning newspaper into useable fiber for household textiles (carpets, curtains, upholstery).

Now I’ll knit with just about anything – casette tape, grape vines, plastic bags, telephone cord, etc. I’ve got to knit with paper. This has possibilities. This is the solution to technical obstacles for some projects on a back burner.

So I’ve been researching spinning. After working out that a purchased spinning wheel is beyond my reach, I looked to home-made versions. And then kismet struck, in the form of Chris Jordan’s Build Your Own Spinning Wheel page, and his reference to Thomas Kilbride’s Spinning and Weaving at Home: Expert Advice …. With only a bit of effort (what would we do without abebooks.com or alibris.com?), I located a serviceable copy of the book in a small shop in England, which arrived by post a week later. What does Kilbride recommend? Making a spinning wheel out of an old bicycle.

Now I have son who’s become something of an urban bicycle maven, collecting old junkers and fixing them up at the “Bike Church” program (which both teaches bicycle mechanics and maintenance but also helps more than a few inner city kids with their bikes). And the result of my son’s bicycle addiction is the “bike graveyard” he’s maintaining. He’s sworn an oath, on Mother’s Day, to make me a spinning wheel with that bike in the rear. That very one. By the end of the summer. Kismet.

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