MICRO SPIN

2021 _ ongoing

traditional hand spindles made from steel, brass, wood and PLA filament

Without fibres that become yarn, my job as a textile designer and artist is unthinkable and understanding the process and ideally mastering it myself has become part of my work and has kept me intensively occupied for the last three years. When I think back to my student years, the yarn in the weaving workshop was simply there as a matter of course, available and easy to order when in doubt. The spinning wheel was there, but I didn‘t really dare to use it: I was full of predjucies, I tried once and failed miserably - that was it for many years.

The Schirm & Strauch project with Linda Schirmel gave me a new lease of life and I taught myself to spin by hand bit by bit with a hand spindle - now I travel with it everywhere and thanks to public spinning I get regularly engaged in fun or even deep conversations. I also learnt that not all wool fibers are the same and how complicated it is at the moment for local virgin wool in an industrial context and that it still has a long way to go and is even dependent on politics. Hand spindles can be also done from everyday objects or precisely and on demand with a 3D printer. Printing customised whorls in fab labs or maker spaces is fun and opens new doors towards unlimited yarn creations.

Additionally teaching hand spinning became a mission believing that this basic and archaic method of textile production is empowering and helps to understand the urgent transformation from mass production and mass consumption towards concious desicion making either for my design colleagues or consumers.

I teached almost 50 people (as of: summer 2024) how to spin by hand.
You want to become one of them?
Feel free to contact me!

NICOLE KIERSZ