Birth of a Fiber Fiend?

Little Girl was interested in my handmade frame loom She thought it could be hers now that I had a new one. I'll admit it has been looking very forlorn since my rigid heddle arrived but it's not a good size for a six year old to manage so I constructed one out of cardboard for her and helped her get started. She's tried knitting before and liked it but didn't have the patience and attention span to actually make anything. Weaving is far from instant gratification but you do get results fast enough to feel like you're getting somewhere, even for a six year old.

About 3 weeks later here's her potholder/trivet. We cut it off the loom and almost immediately after I set it on the counter and as I pulled a cake out of the oven she squealed, "we're using it today!?" "Yep" I said and set the hot cake pan down on her creation, she was so proud.

With her first weaving project down I thought we should try another one. Husband and I are almost done with her new room so I thought she could use a rug by her bed. I went looking for some t-shirt yarn. I wanted colors that would match her room but I also wanted a yarn that was doing some good by using up textile waste which limits color choices sooo... I ordered white yarn.

Time to dye!

We wound off some 20 gram hanks of our t-shirt yarn and I planned out some formulas to sample. We did three pinks, three yellows, and three greens. Hoping we'd get one of each that would not only work together but also with her newly painted room. Halfway through Little Girl said, "You're doing all the plans!" So I had to abandon my carefully planned formulas and let her dye a few hanks herself. We were working with 4 primary dye stocks and mixing them for each individual hank as we went along so she mixed together a few milliliters if this and a few milliliters of that and I wrote down what she did. We're going to review the results and decide which colors work and if we should tweak some of them and get dyeing for real soon

Then today this happened:

This was a real proud momma moment here. Little Girl is the oldest of four children and she's used to being good at things right away. Spinning yarn is hard when you start out, there are so many things you have to think about all at the same time. She's been asking me to teach her to spin and waiting patiently all week while I got my yarn finished and off my limited supply of bobbins so we could get started today. She was excited, but she quickly started to get frustrated as 15-20 minutes in we were still starting and stopping, losing the yarn because she drafted it till it broke, occasionally getting the too thick yarn jammed in the orifice because she was drafting too little and just generally not getting it. What was cool was how I could see her progress, starting to get a feel of how her hands were supposed to go, how the fiber felt when she drafted correctly vs when she was fighting against the fiber, the sequence of things, etc. But she couldn't see that. She could only see that she kept having to stop and have her mistakes fixed, she felt like she was failing and wanted to give up and watch t.v. with her brothers. I told her what I could see. Not all the little details but just that she WAS learning, she WAS getting better. She kept trying. I realized I could open up the fiber and pre-draft it a little to make it a little easier on her. She took a short break and when she came back she got it! She got into a rhythm and she spun the whole length of fiber I had prepped for her. I was so proud. Not just because she made yarn and not just because I'd love for this to be an interest we share but because she is learning to persevere in the face of setbacks and that's no small thing.