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more photosDrop spindles handmade by Tom Forrester from Canada were available Saturday at the Spin-Off Autumn Retreat in Sunriver.
Scott Hammers / The Bulletin
‘Fiber junkies' soar into Sunriver
By Scott Hammers / The Bulletin
Published: November 01. 2009 4:00AM PSTSUNRIVER — “We're all fiber junkies,” said Patti Bobonich, explaining her participation in SOAR on Saturday in Sunriver. “And we try to find a way to support our habit.”
SOAR is the Spin-Off Autumn Retreat, one of the biggest events of the year for knitters and yarn spinners. Held in a different location each year, the 27th annual SOAR wrapped up a week of buying, selling, learning, teaching and socializing in Sunriver on Saturday.
Bobonich, 60, from Helena, Mont., said she's supports her fiber habit through her company, Sweet Grass Wool. Once a year, she'll buy all of the wool from a friend's flock of 350 Targhee sheep — it's about 1,000 pounds after the unusable portions are discarded — stuff it in a horse trailer and head across the Canadian border to a mill in Alberta for processing. The resulting fibers and yarns are highly sought after, she said, as most commercially available fibers and yarns are imported products of lesser quality.
Sheep's wool represented only the tip of the fiber iceberg at the vendors market on Saturday, with sacks of fiber and spools of yarn from yaks, camels and rabbits available for purchase. The most unusual item available was likely a single sack of fiber from a vicuna, a wild ancestor of the alpaca found in the Andes of South America. Declared endangered in the early 1970s, vicuna numbers have recovered, but their fiber still commands an impressive $250 per ounce.
Exotic fibers are one of the many changes seen by people who've been involved in the spinning industry for decades, according to Curt Fricke, 77, of Granite Falls, Wash.
In 1973, Fricke bought a business that sold machines for carding, the process of straightening animal hair into fiber that can be spun into yarn. Delivering two machines he'd sold, Fricke was surprised to find that his customer was not a hobbyist, but a commercial yarn producer. The customer provided Fricke with the name of a trade publication for similar businesses, and Fricke took out a small ad in the back. Within a month, he had 100 orders for his carding machines, even though he could only build 20 machines a week.
Fricke said he's refined the machines a bit over the last 36 years to create a higher-quality “batt” of fiber, but he's still putting them together one at a time in his home workshop.
“In those days, we were mostly catering to the hippies. They were making macrame, and it could be lumpy and bumpy,” he said. “That's changed. Now, you're doing musk ox and camel down and silk.”
Diane Trussett, 66, from Solon, Maine, said she's been spinning and knitting since she was a little girl, but in the past 10 to 15 years, the industry has “gone crazy.”
She's been a vendor at the past 14 SOAR events, and said she's found that spinning and knitting seem to have a unique appeal to people with high-stress jobs like doctors, nurses, engineers and teachers.
Being selected as a vendor for the event is a lucrative prize, Trussett said, noting the shoppers she'd seen rolling a wheeled suitcase to carry their purchases.
“All of us do really well,” Trussett said. “It's like a feeding frenzy for these women.”
Karen White, 41, from Portland, said people tell her that knitting and spinning have an almost meditative quality. Between the peace of mind hobbyists enjoy and the satisfaction that comes from making useful items, knitting and spinning seem to be nearly immune from the economic slowdown, White said.
“I think people take such comfort in it. It's the one thing they're still willing to splurge on,” she said.
Friend Jasmine St. Laurent, 24, also from Portland, nodded in agreement.
“And it's still cheaper than therapy,” she said.
Scott Hammers can be reached at 541-383-0387 or at shammers@bendbulletin.com.
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