Script for

Episode 143:

Creativity Lessons from Denise Love

Spinning tips from a non-spinner? Absolutely. Making is making, and I believe there's a lot we as spinners can learn from artists who work with other media. Coming up I'm going to break it down.

Hello there, darling Sheepspotter! Welcome to Episode 143 of The Sheepspot Podcast. I'm Sasha, and my job is to help you make more yarns you love. In today's episode, I'm going to take what I've learned from some abstract painting classes and suggest how we might use those lessons in our spinning practice.

So last week I talked about my still-absent spinning mojo, and how I'm experimenting with a new medium: watercolor paints. And this has led me to Skill Share, where I've discovered an art teacher who works in a variety of media. Her name is Denise Love, and she seems to have made dozens of classes on Skill Share, and I've got to say I'm a little in love with her. I just find her exuberance and excitement completely endearing, and I think she's the perfect teacher for me at this moment, because she's all about experimentation and play and that's what I've been craving in my own practice.

Find ways to make getting started easy

Denise talks a lot in her classes about the problem of the blank page and ways to just get started. For example, she suggests making a big-ish painting (remember, we're talking about abstract paintings) that you then "crop" or cut up into smaller ones. What this makes possible is just putting marks on the page to begin with and then worrying about composition, the relation of the elements to each other and the frame, later. You can't get too precious about a painting if you know that you're going to end up cutting it up into smaller pieces, so this approach also lowers the stakes.

I've been thinking about whether there are any analogues to this approach in spinning. How can we make it easier to get started spinning? I think there is one thing that we don't talk about enough, and that is allowing ourselves time to warm up and experiment at the beginning of a project. And I want to encourage you (and I'm also encouraging myself) to think about the first few yards of any project as time to experiment with different tensions, diameters, and even drive ratios. Make a few plyback samples and see which ones you like best. I often start spinning something and think that however I happened to start spinning is just fated to be the way I spin for the rest of the project, when there are probably a range of good options, which I could discover if I just gave myself even ten minutes to experiment.

Make lots of things

Another stakes-lowering thing Denise teaches and demonstrates in her classes is how freeing it can be to make lots of iterations of a thing. So in a painting session she'll make eight or nine small paintings in which she explores similar ideas or techniques in slightly different ways. This increases the likelihood that she'll end up with something she likes because she can stop doing things she doesn't like the look of and double down on what she does like. The iteration allows her to refine and make adjustments as she goes.

So how can we translate this principle of making lots of slightly different versions of something to spinning? Say it with me: we can do it by sampling, and not just sampling different yarns, as I just talked about, but by incorporating sampling into different parts of the yarnmaking process. When we're washing a fleece, we can wash a small sample first, see how it goes, and make tweaks before washing pounds and pounds of wool. When we're deciding how to prepare a fleece, we can try using a variety of methods, spin samples, and see what yarn we like best and most enjoy spinning. When we're combining colorways in a combo spin or a combination drafting project (see episode 101 for the difference), we can try several different versions to see which one we like the best.

Use good materials

I'm learning a lot from Denise about art supplies; she has a lot, and usefully, she's a big believer in using professional-quality materials. When I first got started with watercolor I was introduced to the distinction between craft, student, and professional grade paints, brushes, and paper (watercolor paper: it's a whole thing). I learned that the difference between grades of paint is the quality and amount of pigment present. I started with a student grade set of pan watercolors, but as I work my way through them I'm looking forward to starting to experiment with more professional grade paints and papers.

Here the application to spinning is pretty obvious. Use the best materials and tools you can afford, because it will make a huge difference to your spinning experience right from the beginning. And for heaven's sake, stop accepting "gifts" of free fleeces and then feeling that you're being wasteful if you don't spin every bit of it. There are watercolors for sale that aren't lightfast, and there is wool so packed with vm that it's not worth your time. Be kind to yourself, honor your time and energy, and work with good stuff. Spinning is supposed to be fun!

Recycle your leftovers

The exercise of making a large painting and then cutting out the parts of it that you like is going to produce some scraps, right? Denise reminds us that those scraps can be just the thing to add to an abstract collage. I've been doing some collage, as well, and having some bits of painting projects to put in collages can really liven things up by adding texture and color--and it's probably color you already like, since you've already used it in a painting!

Last week I compared art batts to collages. So here, again, the application of this idea to spinning is a straightforward one: save those little bits of fiber and use them on your drum-carder or blending board. I sort mine by color and keep them in big bins in my studio, and they are a great way to create rich, complex color in your yarns.

Let yourself love what you make

The last lesson I learned from Denise can be good advice for any maker. One of the reasons I find watching her classes so much fun is that Denise herself is having so much fun. She'll make a mark and burst out laughing, or say "I love that!" or "Isn't that just beautiful?" In other words, she lets herself love what she makes. And I think we can hesitate to let ourselves just fall head over heels in love with our own creations. I know I did, for years. I didn't trust my own skills and instincts, and only if someone else told me that they liked something I made, did I feel like I had permission to like it too. And when I think back on that version of myself it makes me really sad. I know now that if I love it, that's enough. I don't need others to affirm my aesthetic choices. So just decide, today, that you're going to let yourself love what you make; that doesn't mean that you have to love every little thing about every project, or that you're going to stop striving to get better. It just means that you're going to allow yourself to fully take in the joy of creating stuff.

To sum up, the five lessons I've learned from painting classes with Denise Love are: find ways to make getting started easier, make lots of things and iterate as you go; use good materials; use your leftovers; and let yourself love what you make. I hope you've found these lessons give you some food for thought and that you experiment with them in your own practice. If you think of any other ways to apply these lessons to spinning, I would love to hear about them. You can add them to the dedicated discussion thread in The Flock where you can comment on this episode and discuss it with me and other listeners. The link is in the show notes for this episode, which you'll find right inside your podcast app. So just open up the description for this episode, click the link, and you'll be taken right to the thread.

Darling Sheepspotter, that's it for me this week. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back next week with our first episode in March. All the podcasts in March are going to be about the plying and yarn structure pillar from the Pillars of Skillful Spinning™, and you definitely don't want to miss them. While you're waiting, spin something! It's good for the soul, I promise.