Here’s my personal narrative of how fiber work has grown as part of the DIY movement, and where in the movement it currently makes its home.

Over the past decade and a half, knitting (shadowed by its one-hook-wonder cousin, crochet) experienced a slow but steady rise in popularity among the young and funky crowd that makes up a large part of the DIY community. The publication of Stitch ‘n Bitch: The Knitter’s Handbook in 2004 catalyzed a sudden swell of interest in knitting, solidifying its place in the DIY world. Personally, I have somewhat mixed feelings about Stitch ‘n Bitch – I feel like it’s a little bit oversimplified for its intended audience of adults, and I’ve watched a lot of eager knitters finish the Stitch ‘n Bitch patterns without any real sense of empowerment to continue on towards more challenging projects – however, it was a book that legitimized knitting as hip and utilitarian for a new generation of crafters, and for that we owe its author Debbie Stoller many, many cupcakes.

Over the next few years the really exciting bit of DIY knitting developed – hoards of smart and busy knitters migrated onto Ravelry, and an online version of knitting’s tradition of mutual education and collaboration was built. I cannot say enough glowing things about Ravelry, except to caution you never, ever to go there because you will never, ever leave.

More recently, felting has made the jump from its former status as a post-knitting magic trick involving a washing machine and lots of prayer to a DIY craft in its own right. While there are a bunch of excellent books on felting out there, I had my moment of realizing that felting had come of age while I was reading Feltique. This gorgeous book covers a bunch of techniques – needle felting, fulling, wet felting – with projects that feel both classy and approachable.

Where does spinning fit into all this? Well, it hasn’t been a particularly strong presence so far. The Craftzine blog, which lists knitting, felting, and weaving as searchable categories, doesn’t list spinning yet. However, the rise in the popularity of felting means that a lot of the fuzzy fibers used for spinning are becoming more easily available. Knitters are also great allies for spinners in terms of creating demand for interesting fibers. They’ve been using conventional fibers – wool, angora, silk, cotton – for years, as well as a hand full of more rare or recent fibers – hemp, tencel, yak, etc. At the same time, some innovative folks have been using conventional fiber processes like knitting and crocheting with completely different classes of material – the results are things like knitted rope poufs, cassette tape crochet – lovely takes on everyday materials, and definitely the kinds of projects where yarn designed for the specific project could be really useful.

So spinning’s presence in DIY isn’t particularly strong yet. The thing is, there is a totally active and thriving spinning community. It tends to be based in more traditional genres of crafting – folks involved in the history of textiles, in the back to the land movement, or folks involved in rearing and shearing sheep. That this community doesn’t overlap too much with the DIY community seems to me partly a function of a pretty big age difference, and partly a result of craft movements’ tendencies to re-invent themselves from scratch over and over. I love how different these reiterations can be – I think it helps crafting as a whole maintain its diversity – but in terms of DIY spinning it means that, right now, you’ll probably have to reach outside of the DIY community in order to get started.

And you know what, you should! The fiber festivals, spinning guilds, and fiber instruction currently offered nation-wide are top notch. Even (heck, especially) in rural areas, there are some great resources available to help you dive into spinning. If that’s not enough, here are a couple reasons that integrating with the local spinning network outside of DIY culture is a great idea:

• By using local fibers and spinners as resources you’ll gain more control over what type of fiber and yarn you have access to for projects, and you’ll become more deeply integrated into the whole process of textile production.
• Spinning local fiber is a lot like eating local food. Networks operating on the “know your farmer” mentality already exist within the spinning community. Local fiber guilds, sheep shearers, or yarn stores can probably give you leads (You want to be a little bit careful with this one – before you know it you’ll be on an alpaca farm and some fuzzy long-necked cutie will wink at you and suddenly your life calling will change from law school to fiber farming. It happened to a friend of mine – no lie – so consider yourself warned!)

• Innovative materials help knitters and weavers could push the envelope on what they can create – incorporating a little bit of a basic spinning fiber in with novelty materials makes them stronger, and spun material has a springy, twisty quality that brings knitting to life. With these added dimensions creative re-use and re-interpretation of odd materials could go even farther.
• Finally, one of the most exciting directions in the current DIY and crafting movement is the re-imagining of old-world skills in combination with new technology. As LED lighting and soft electrification get more sophisticated imagine being able to spin yourself a yarn that literally glows. The similarities between electrical wiring and fiber could take us some great places.

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You’re also welcome to add your fiber photos to our flickr group (if you post a particularly nifty SpinThing photo on Flickr we may email you for permission to use it on the site).