WHAT SUCCESS & GOING DEEP INTO RIGHT BRAIN LOOKs LIKE

SPINNING & DYEING YARN

BEGINNING 3-D ART

wool roving, coat hanger hooks, cake dyes,

microwave (to set the dyes with)

Learning how to spin your own yarn is an extremely difficult global skill to conquer.

But once there,

it can be relaxing and quite enjoyable.

Every year I teach this Unit,

and every year the kids struggle thru it.

But then one by one they have that ah-ha moment where it becomes fun,

and then they want to make more extra credit yarns for their weaving projects.

Above is junior Angelica Luza and below 8th grader Yusuf Karan.

Poor Yusuf had no idea I was taking his picture.

Adorable!

Next to him is senior Simran Ranjit

 who has finished hers and is dyeing it with a lovely shade of green.

Next we have 8th grader Alaa Melabeh spinning some extra credit hand dyed roving

donated to me by dear friend  Fiber Artist Lori Lawson of Capistrano Fiber Arts.

You can find her under Artists I Follow in the right side column of blog.

Below is a very happy senior,

Vivian Shi,

showing me her finished plied yarn.

Her next step will be to dye it her favorite color to be used in her next assignment,

the Dream Catcher.

Here are seniors Ricky Gallardo and Sophie Yang having way too much fun.

And below is 8th grader Annie Nguyen

 spinning up a batch of extra credit.

What a cutie!!

Best buddies juniors Kareema Mohamed and Kiana Hernandez

 are having a wonderful time bonding over their yarns and dyeing

while senior Lauren Gammage is helping Ricky undo some extra twist in his yarn

 before plying it up. 

All 34 of the kids were able to learn to spin,

and it was fun for me to see their ah-ha moments.

Way to hang in there young ones!

SPINNING A FINE YARN, AN AMENDMENT

SPINNING YARN

BEGINNING 3-D ART

bfl roving & spinning hook made from a coat hanger

Just found this great pix of Ms. Hall learning to spin & ply her yarn.

Sorry Donna for not finding it sooner and putting it into the original post.

ORIGINAL POST

First of all let me introduce you to jack of all trades,

Cross Country & Track and Field,

 Coach Milan,

a Paraeducator for one of my students who joins us everyday for the Beginning 3-D class.

Occasionally he gets to join in on an assignment,

and I'm discovering that he has an artistic gift for design & craftsmanship as well.

Here he is learning to spin yarn,

a very difficult global skill.

It takes extreme concentration to learn this skill as you can see.

The kids were totally unaware that I was even taking photos of them.

And here are the young ones plying their singles 

and using the sink facets to stretch their yarn from.

Of course their are lots of other ways to learn these skills but the coat hanger as spinning hook

and stretching out the singles seems to work best with the beginners.

Senior Anna Lee is Hooked

SPINNING

BEGINNING 3-D ART

wool, angora goat, angora rabbit, and cotton rovings

Yeap, I've turned another student onto the joy of spinning.

She's HOOKED!

There is something magical about this fiber art.

Because it's a global skill,

once the kids go thru the difficult process of learning it,

it becomes a very relaxing pastime.

And they can't get enough of it.

So even though the unit is over, 

many of my students continue to spin for their own enjoyment,

 like Anna here.

Anna carding up her fibers to spin.

Andean plying up her singles into a 2-ply.

And her finished skein.

Lovely!

What's Laarnie What Too?

Spinning, dyeing and building her own drop spindle.

Senior Laarnie Barcelon is the lone ranger in my Advanced 3-D class this year.

But that's a good thing, she is able to become completely absorbed in her work and go deeply into Right Brain.

As a result she is producing incredible works of art this year.

She started the year off by dyeing raw fleece with food colors.

Then I taught her to spin on a drop spindle and also on the spinning wheel.

She took to the spinning wheel like a duck to water.

Just look at her lovely tail spun yarns here.

All these yarns below were either spun on the drop spindle or the spinning wheel.

Drop Spindle

She was also required to build from scratch her own drop spindle.

It was so beautifully designed and crafted that I had to take several shoots at different angles.

The cross bars are from the leftover molding pieces we used in the barn

 up at the cabin this summer.

She was required to build it from at least two different types of wood.

I believe she used oak. alder and poplar.

I adore how she trailed beads and gemstones around the layers 

so that our eye wraps around the piece.

Lovely work Laarnie.

 I'm so proud to showcase your work!

Back to School Nite 2014

A special thanks to seniors Kaili Hamada and Bianca Tolentino for hanging out with me and demonstrating for the parents on the Saori Loom and Spinning Wheel at Back to School Nite as I introduced myself and my program to the parents.

Teenagers Learning to Spin Yarn

What a blast they are having as they are learning to draft their roving and put a bit of twist in it to turn the wool into yarn.  Each has found their own way to approach it.  Some sit, some stand, some talk, some don't, and it's all good as I see them coming in at lunch to do more.

In the corner we see junior Clarisa Bloemhof having way too much fun, while junior Daphne Chiang takes a much more serious approach.  We also see junior Justin Jang laughing because he knows I'm taking everyone's picture and I'm going to post it for the world to see.  Juniors Jon Madamba, Alice Hong and senior Vinisha Kothari are also completely focused on their task.

Junior Young Song and senior Tiffany Kang, in the rear, are both using the thin metal pipe on the fountain of the sink to ply their yarns, and senior Andrew Rim is checking his ply before he winds onto his bobbin storage area.  

I make the spinning hooks for them from hanger wire.  I can get 4 hooks per hanger.

What was really fun to watch was junior Bianca Tolentino plying her yarn all the way across the room.  If you look closely you can see her yarn stretched over senior Maryann Rui's head.  Bianca is the one in the pink jacket.

But the person who probably took the most joy in learning to spin was junior Kaili Hamada.  Here she and senior Julia Kim are skeining their yarns on the Niddy Noddys.

The students were also required to dye their yarns with either the Rit dyes that were leftover from the tye-dyeing unit, or with packages of Kool-Aid.  Here we see 8th grader Annie Lin on the left and seniors Sam Kim and Esther Woo dipping their yarns in the baths.

Here is Kaili again after she took her skein off the Niddy Noddy.  She's created a new look for head bands.  Love the joy radiating off her sweet face.

The finished products (above).  

Some of the dyed yarns drying in the shade, and below, they have butterflied them up to hand in and be evaluated.  I grade them on effort and craftsmanship, and offer up tons of extra credit for spinning up more then they needed.

A special thanks goes out to my dear friend, Lori Lawson, of Capistrano Fiber Fiber Arts for donating all her beautiful hand dyed rovings for the kids to work with.

Shout Out to Bianca Tolentino

For going above and beyond by coming in everyday at lunch to teach herself how to spin on a wheel.

You go girl!!

Junior Tristin Eddy - Spinner Extraordinaire - With Her Yarn!!!

One of my favorite aspects about teaching is when my students fall in love with an art or craft, and want to explore it more on their own at home.  This year Tristin caught the spinning bug.

Every year in my Beginning 3-d class I teach the kids how to spin and dye their own yarn using only little coat hanger hooks which amazingly work really well.  And then if the kids get into it they might move onto a drop spindle or even choose from one of my many spinning wheels.  This year Tristin Eddy totally loved the process and came in at lunch and after school so she could learn to use the wheel.  I encouraged her to take it home and she was off to spin up some beautiful roving that she had bought over Xmas break in Las Cruces, New Mexico.  I understand that Tristin's grandfather has a wheel for her and she will be picking it up soon.  That makes my heart so happy Tristin.

Tomorrow I hope to show off Tristin's yarn below. 

And here it is - Tah Dah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Can you believe this is her first singles on the wheel???  She's pro already, plus she has started to knit it up into a scarf, WOW, told ya she was gooooooooooooooood  :)

Ma, Pa, Grandma & Grandpa Eddy, look at your girl go!

Missing My Students

It's only been a week since school has been out but already I'm missing my students. So just wanted to say hi to all you young artists who follow my blog, and hope your summer is going well. I've been catching up on all my chores that I always put off till summer break, going to the gym every morning, finally getting to all the doc appts. I've been putting off, and had our first beach Wed at 32nd street in Newport this week. Next Wed I'll be between 56 and 57th streets in Newport. Please join us if you can. I think Whitney and Ariel are coming down. Should be lots of fun. Pack a lunch. Above is senior Rachel Rilloraza spinning yarn for the baby sweater she knitted earlier in the year. This is the second summer that Rachel took the wheel home with her. I hope you are spinning up some beautiful fiber Rachel. Missing you.