Making yarn with your hands and feet

And a question I always ask is this:

What did humans used to do? Before the modernisation/industrialisation/speeding up of all things? Before we had access to these tools?

And then I turned to books as I tend to do.

(I’ve always found books to be a necessary substitute for the wisdom of elders of which many of us have been stripped. A wisdom we have lost through speeding up and too fast lives quite through necessity of trying to survive. Our elders were simply surviving there was/is precious little time to carry on the crafts of old.)

And found a beautifully anthropological archaeological text of the spinning and weaving traditions on the high altitude herders of the Andes and I found…

Very few tools.

No carders, certainly no drum carders, no spinning wheels, no niddy noddy, no lazy Kate. no centre pull ball.

Just hands.

And feet!

And a hand carved spindle (or a stick and a rock!).

These women were making yarn from fleece with nothing but their bodies and a spindle. And they were herding whilst they did it. #goals

This is the method I love. I choose to use hand carders but everything else is done by hand. So I choose to wind a skein with my foot and my elbow rather than a niddy noddy (video here).

When we return to the old ways not only do we save ourselves pennies we also gain the natural movements our bodies need to be healthy and well.

Carly x