First-Ever Retreat of Francophone Spinners in Lorraine, France - Sept. 8-9

See the photos on Sandrine's blog. With the strong support of her husband, Richard, corsetmaker par excellence, she organized the get-together held in the angora goat farm of Marylene and Alain, folks behind Horizon Mohair.

More photos by Sandrine and Richard here. Florence, who raises sheep in Belgium, blogged about her six-hour drive to France here.

All lined up: me, Midian (Switzerland), Sandrine (France), Amélie (Pouxy's daughter), Carine (Belgium), Muriel (France), Pouxy (France), Laurence (France) and her daughter, Garance. Below: Florence (Belgium) and Agnès (Switzerland).


Materials for swapping.

Flashback: June 2006 - Textile Fair in the Burgundy Region

Flavigny-sur-Ozerain -- you may not think you know this place, but if you've seen the Johnny Depp movie, Chocolat, you do know it. You may also have sucked those tiny anis-flavored dragees in lavander tins that is the other claim to fame of this, otherwise, quiet town.

Last June, Flavigny-sur-Ozerain saw the Weaving and Textile Arts Exposition for the European Market, the second such event with the objective of sensitizing the European public to the textile arts, specifically hand-weaving.

There were only about a dozen merchants/exhibitors and one fleece shearer who wore a t-shirt appropriately marked "Mouton" (Sheep). Laurence Pocztar, whose idea it was to drive to this event, paid the equivalent of a Starbucks triple latte to Monsieur Mouton and he readily sheared a sheep of Laurence's choice and stuffed the fleece into a sack for her to take home.

Along on this car trip was Augusta Uhlenbeck, a Dutch master fiber artist residing in France who weaves magic into the textile she creates on her loom.

Photos from the outing:



Augusta (top) and Laurence (above), hungry after a four-hour drive from Paris. It should have taken us only two hours, but we took to the road without a map and we had to borrow the map of picnickers along the way as we veered away from the direction of Flavigny.



Felting demonstration.


Spinning demonstration.


An old European wheel.


Mr. Macho, err, Monsieur Mouton.


Laurence chooses which sheep to have sheared.



A bag's worth of fleece for the price of a cup of coffee.

Back at the Laine Zinzin studio.




A happy cat on a bed of washed mohair bought all the way from Texas. Laurence has a preference for doing the entire fiber preparation herself, but this Texan mohair was a challenge. The odor just prevaded her studio.


When I got back to Paris it was midnight. Fortunately, this city never sleeps. So it was four-season pizza, a little pitcher of wine and a book on natural dyeing bought from the textile fair to cap the fiber-filled day.


Little Gem2 homeward bound.

AIDS 2006 Toronto: Through the eyes of a craftster

This is the world's largest HIV/AIDS conference. Held every two years, the biennial event held this month in Toronto drew 24,000 attendees, including Bill Clinton and Bill Gates, in addition to the usual motley of scientists, health care providers, political, community and business leaders, journalists, government, non-governmental and intergovernmental representatives, and people living with HIV.

I had been hoping Youssouf, the young Malian M.D., would come so I could hand him some carders for the women of Segou. Instead, he gave me the cell phone number of his boss, the Malian National AIDS Council Executive Secretary, who was roaming the convention center with the Malian Minister of Health. After two brief phone calls about a possible meeting, I gave up the idea of asking two African high officials to carry the carders for me.

Enter Djelika Diallo, a commercial sex worker (CSW) who had flown all the way from Mali to read the story of Danaya So -- the Malian organization of CSWs -- under the auspices of the Montreal-based group called Stella.



The moment I took out the carders, Djelika's eyes lit up. She said in French, "I recognized them instantly because my grandmother had a pair. We don't see new ones like these anymore because they have stopped making them. The only way we can get hold of them is if we find old ones." I requested Djelika to take them back home with her and get them to the women of Segou since Danaya So has a branch there.



The lighter side of a serious international gathering included lessons on making condom pins. This young craftster fashioned for herself what she called a "safety belt".



I lined up to get a free t-shirt hand-painted. It was a looong line. Then I thought, "Why do I have to have someone do the design?" I embellish t-shirts at home all the time. So, I volunteered to paint other people's t-shirts to help shorten the line. Then, when this group of AIDS activist from Peru ran out of t-shirts to give away, I painted my own. The idea was to paint over the silkscreened letters "VIH" (French and Spanish for HIV) and turn it into "VIDA". Of course, I changed mine to "VIE".



Finally, a fashion exhibition. Can you guess what these fabulous clothes are made of? Hint: they're not made of fiber.



Who'd 'ave thunk??? They gave out training on how to put on and take off a condom in the dark.

Marrakesh sights for the fiber fanatic

Natural pigments at herboriste's shop

Dyed yarn


Felted bags


Dyers' market


Dyed fleece


Tannery


Hello Yarn's woolly wallpaper at the AIDS conference in Marrakesh.

A charkha from Maryland to Marrakesh to Mali

A Babe charkha and a Pinkie spinning wheel came with me on a business trip to Marrakesh this month, along with four sets of carders (two for wool and two for cotton) made by Otto Strauch. The tools and equipment were handed over to Youssouf Diallo, a physician from the Mali National AIDS Council, who suggested during our first meeting last month in Nairobi that the women of Segou would be the ideal beneficiaries of my project, "Charkhas for Africa". The city of Segou is known for spinning (with a spindle), dyeing and weaving.

A week before Youssouf came to Marrakesh, he was in Segou and from there, he brought me a woolen blanket and a cotton tapestry (on the sofa behind us) which he said were gifts of frierndship from Segou women.

As I would not be able to travel to Mali this time, Youssouf took the initiative to learn how the equipment worked so he could demonstrate its use back in his country. I must say he took to charkha spinning like fish to water, although he didn't care for the spinning wheel as it required hand-foot coordination.

Introducing the charkha to the women of Ethiopia

This is the traditional Ethiopian garb. It is made of cheesecloth woven by hand with cotton thread spun on a spindle.


Here is an Ethiopian woman spinning cotton fiber on a spindle. It is nothing more than a barbecue stick, a whorl made of heavy cardboard and a staple wire bent for parking the just-spun thread.



And when she needs to park the spindle to fluff her fiber, she does so on her ear. A charming process. That is, until you think about the realities of life in Africa: Needing to spin to survive.

In the last five years, I have had the privilege of traveling to Africa on the business of battling AIDS. I have met grassroots folks who have had to support community AIDS projects with income-generating activities, such as selling their own handicrafts.

As an aspiring spinner then, I had also struggled to produce spun yarn, with a spindle, that was long enough to make a knitted swatch. In time, I just bit the bullet and bought my first spinning wheel. And, boy, did it gallop, compared to the spindle!

Then I produced my first full bobbin and niddy-noddied it to a skein. Then there were 50 skeins consecrated to the Brooklyn Renegade Craft Fair booth of Handspun Collective, a consortium of "spinners with attitude" that I belong to. Then Jacey Boggs, Insubordiknit herself, emailed an invite, "Can you produce 300 skeins for Stitches East between May and October?!" Hmm, that is a lot, but with a wheel, it's do-able.

So, I knew that if I could only get spinning wheels to an African country with a strong handspinning tradition, it could make a difference. Or, at least, I could try.

My first stop was New Zealand, land of wool and second home to me and my husband. I knocked at the doors of Ashford and Majacraft. Ashford offered a substantial discount on their spinning wheels and no break on shipping. Majacraft offered two old spinning wheels -- not their brand -- that had gathered dust in its factory shed that was going to be abandoned for a new one. Glynis Poad, the owner and the spinning lady in all the Majacraft ads, also volunteered to pick up the shipping tab. I took up her kind offer.

Once the vintage wheels arrived at my doorstep in Maryland, I realized that bringing them to Africa was not the way to go. First, even in their dismantled state, they were bulky, not to mention, heavy. They would be expensive to dispatch, whether as parcel or as checked-in luggage. Second, they were not simple enough to duplicate, if the end-users so desired. Third, the standard spinning wheels are more for wool than cotton, which is the fiber of choice in the continent, although they raise sheep for wool in some parts of Africa. So, I sold the wheels to aspiring spinners at my fiber workshop, the Springwater in Alexandria, Virginia. I turned around and registered myself with Nels Wiberg's Babe's Garden Fiber as a retailer of PVC pipe charkhas, the ideal equipment for spinning cotton. Weighing 2 lbs., 11 oz., getting them to their destination would be no trouble at all.

And that is how I was able to bring four charkhas to Addis Ababa this month.

"PVC?" the Mary Joy project manager of the kebele (locality) I went to said, "sure, we have those; we use them as water pipes."

Here I am assembling a charkha with a Mary Joy staffer who acted as interpreter.


As anybody anywhere in the world with a new "toy", the Ethiopian women were enthralled.

In the meantime, I have met other Africans who would like to see the same equipment introduced to other countries in the continent. Togo, for instance. And Mali, where they are, I was told, also badly in need of handcarders.

If you would like to help by donating an idle spinning wheel or a set of handcarders, please email me.

Alternatively, a cigar box charkha can be built with Spin-Off magazine instructions at this site. Also, I'd be happy to receive spare dog rakes and combs as handcarder substitute. Email me for the address. Thank you, Ava and Cheri, for the great ideas.

Laurence Pocztar: Meeting the wool fairy behind lainezinzin

Here I am outdoors of the tabac in front of the Palaiseau RER station. This is Laurence Pocztar's train stop. Palaiseau is just outside Paris, about 20 short stops from the Etoile. I'm bringing a bag of fiber-related goodies and I put a skein of handspun on the table so she doesn't miss me.

In front of me are some of the people in the neighborhood, having beer and saying "hello" to each other.

From the tabac, you look up and see the train station building.

Finally, Laurence picks me up in her little yellow SUV and, at home, I meet her 18-year-old son, Adrien, and her 12-year-old daughter, Garance (seen here taking our photo). She is unpretentious and unaffected. Genuinely warm at first meeting, although we had hardly said much in emails, other than to agree on the time and the date.

We have tea in her living room and then we go to her garage-turned-studio filled with bags of fleece and all the accoutrements of a fiber artist: spinning wheel, weaving loom, knitting machine, washing machine, pressure cooker, dye powders from France, as well as from Madagascar (her father worked for the UNESCO in Paris as my dad did in the '80s).

We are to have pizza, but we chat and chat in her studio. Laurence spins on my Little Gem which I carried onboard the plane from the US to East Africa and back to Europe. Before we know it, the sun is coming down, it's getting close to 10 pm and I'm horrified to miss the train. Poor Adrien and Garance, it must have been an eternity waiting for the pizza that had yet to be ordered.

Laurence walks me to the train station. It is 30 minutes before the train is to arrive and she is so sweet to sit and wait with me. We talk about public education (she teaches plastic arts) and the growing racial tension in America and in France. The train comes and we hug and she says, "Desormais, nous sommes amies." (From now on, we are friends.)

I ride back to Champs Elyees, close to my hotel and I stop at the breadshop chain, Paul, to pick up a wedge of quiche lorraine and strawberry tart. Then I go back to my hotel, Claridge Bellman, and take this photo on the prepared bed for the benefit of my spinning friends who are great lainezinzin fans.



POSTSCRIPT: I wake up the following morning and see my loot courtesy of Laurence. It puts a smile on my face and then the smile disappears. SHIT! I forgot to take pictures of the wool fairy in her studio.