How I came to fiber dyeing

As I've described, I studied art in college and then kept trying to work as a "fine artist" after I graduated. I wasn't dedicated enough, and I was too easily discouraged, and I was busy being self-destructive for most of that time as well, and eventually I just stopped making art. But then I got obsessed with knitting. I knitted a million sweaters and hats and coats and things, many of my own design, and it sort of scratched the art-making itch, and sort of didn't. For one thing, it felt kind of like it didn't really cut it as an artistic outlet.

And then we went to Rhinebeck, my boyfriend and I. Now we are married and he feels no need to join me on my fiber expeditions, but at the time he was courting me and he drove me up to the fiber fair and walked all around the grounds with me. As we ate fried pickles and funnel cakes we strolled around the stalls until we came to a woman who was spinning yarn. This was my first time ever seeing a woman spin yarn; Adam was actually accustomed to it as he'd previously dated a girl whose mother used to spin (and weave as well), and he was fond of watching someone spin. So we stopped and talked with her, and she showed me how she was doing it, and we were completely and utterly transfixed.

Eventually we walked on, and Adam said to me, "I'm going to have to buy you a spinning wheel for Christmas, aren't I?" I honestly had never considered trying to spin before that. My friend Debbie had let me try out a spindle quite a few years before, and I had failed at it and hated it and handed it back to her disgustedly after less than a minute of trying. But this, the wheel, it looked friendly, and accessible, and I thought, I could maybe do that! And with some encouragement from Adam over the next couple months, I accepted the extraordinarily generous gift of a Louet S75 from him for Christmas.

Here's the video my husband took of me learning to spin.

As soon as I got the hang of it (which was surprisingly quickly, especially considering the spindle debacle) I started buying spinning fiber. And buying it, and buying it, and buying it. And I read blogs about spinning. And pretty quickly I discovered the gorgeous hand painted bumps from wonderful sellers on Etsy. One of my early favorites was Sock Pron, whose author had a feature on Fridays about various amazing finds she'd made on Etsy, and she pointed readers to several amazing fiber dyers. And the more I looked at them, the more the ones I really found myself drawn to reminded me of the painterly effects I was fond of making when I was making sculpture. And gradually I began to think maybe I could make art this way too!

I'm definitely not at the point where I feel like I have any facility with the medium. It's frustrating to me, quite a lot. Downstairs in my basement studio I have a picture of some lovely roving that one of my favorite dyers had for sale online; I saved the image and printed it out as an inspiration. More than once I have tried to imitate this roving, and have completely failed. In the process I've discovered ways I like to work, and the fact that overdyeing with brown will save a vomitous mass quite nicely. I wonder if I will ever feel like I really know what I am doing.