The stuff of ring shawls, Fair Isle colorwork, tweeds, and taatit rugs, Shetland wool represents the story of humans in relationship with sheep through thousands of years. Described as exceptionally fine wool "of uncommon softness and fineness" and as "scratchy" and as a double-coated representative of primitive wools, might it be all of these? Discuss how to use the Shetland that best suits your goals. Students must be able to spin singles and make a two-ply independently. $

Every mountain household once practiced spinning and knitting. Learn to select and prepare a sheep’s fleece and/or cotton, spin it on the great or walking wheel, then discover several ways to knit the yarn into traditional, triangular shawls like those worn by generations of mountain women. Return home with small skeins of handspun yarn and the beginnings of a shawl of your own design. Basic knitting experience is helpful; no spinning experience needed.

Yarn speaks for itself. Listen to its story being told through your eyes and hands while spinning yarn that illustrates that story from start to end, or acts as a journal of your daily practice. Blend scraps, fibers, and doodads as you create art yarns that reflect a narrative, or a snapshot in time, while reviewing handspinning basics and beyond. Advanced beginner to intermediate levels welcome; some spinning experience helpful.

...or rug, tapestry, and socks. If you weave, crochet, or knit, personalize your pieces by acquiring the age-old skills of combing, carding, natural dyeing, and spinning. Make your own yarn to add visual interest, softness, color, and texture to any fiber project. Discover the qualities of various breeds of sheep, and play with color, fiber blends, and simple novelty effects. The Folk School has all the equipment needed for this yarn-intensive week for beginning to intermediate students.

Learn to dye wool yarn to produce the effects you want in your knitted projects. Explore space dyeing for repeated colors, random dyeing, dyeing for stripes and dots, dip dyeing, as well as gradients. Cover studio safety, dyeing safely in your home, designing colorways, preparing your yarn, and matching your yarn to a project. No previous dyeing experience required; crocheters, weavers, and spinners welcome. 

Using hand cards and a blending board create rolags, punis, and puni-rolags of various makeups and textures for intentional color planning of gradients, heathers, variegates, fractals, tweeds, etc. Apply differing spinning draws to both suspended and supported spindles yielding distinctive outcomes in your plied results. Intermediate levels welcome; students must be proficient in spinning a stable singles yarn with a hand spindle and have an understanding of plying.

...or rug, tapestry, and socks. If you weave, crochet, or knit, personalize your pieces by acquiring the age-old skills of combing, carding, natural dyeing, and spinning. Make your own yarn to add visual interest, softness, color, and texture to any fiber project. Discover the qualities of various breeds of sheep, and play with color, fiber blends, and simple novelty effects. The Folk School has all the equipment needed for this yarn-intensive week for beginning to intermediate students.

Learn the historical process of flax cultivation from the field to fiber preparation and spinning. Experience using different tools and techniques to process flax, including rippling, using a flax brake, scutching, hackling, distaff dressing, and hand spinning. Whether a fiber artist, museum docent, or teacher of early domestic practices, all students will benefit from individual attention and skill development. Intermediate to advanced students welcome; basic hand-spinning skills required.

Match different fleeces for different types of yarn for weaving and sing about it! Review, prepare and spin a lovely long wool for warp and a plump woolen for weft. Experienced spinsters will revisit hand carding and other styles of fiber preparation while recreating old-timey fabrics like linsey woolsey, dyed in the wool, piece and yarn dyed plain weave. Use pre-warped and other small looms. Touch on natural dyeing, spinning methods, lessons in consistency, loom set up, and fulling. Spinning ex

Expand your spinning possibilities with yarns that range from the smoothest worsted to the loftiest woolen. One extreme creates firm, hard-wearing yarns with crisp definition and the other maximizes softness and warmth–and it feels like magic to spin! Cover a variety of drafting and fiber preparation techniques to fine-tune your yarns, work with multiple fibers, design yarns for different uses, and spin a few novelties. Best suited for those who can spin a continuous yarn.

Don’t be limited by the colors you can buy! Dye your own base colors to blend in different proportions to create subtle variations. Learn to dye solids, using hand and drum carding and other ways to create gradient rovings. Experiment with yarn structure (plies, marling, chain plying, etc.). Understand considerations for dyeing, blending, and spinning for specific projects so you can design and spin exactly the yarn you want. Must be able to spin a single and a simple ply.