While knitting and crocheting remain popular past-times on the Island there aren’t too many people who hand spin their own wool into yarn to do it. Philanthropist lawyer Michelle St. Jane is the exception.

Mrs. St. Jane, originally from Auckland, New Zealand, recently gave a series of demonstrations of wool spinning on a travelling spinning Jenny at Verdmont Museum, and is slated to make appearances at several local schools.

The Royal Gazette recently met with Mrs. St. Jane to talk about this ancient art form.

“I basically spin wool into yarn,” said Mrs. St. Jane. “I have been doing it for about 25 years. Currently, my project involves black wool that was picked up when I was in New Zealand. I am making a sweater for a friend of mine. It is purely a leisure activity.”

She said that she hadn’t really done any spinning in 15 years, until a friend noticed her travelling spinning Jenny sitting idly in a corner.

“My wheel was not working properly, and a good friend of mine was admiring it and asking if I would make him a sweater,” Mrs. St. Jane said. “I said I would make him a sweater if he would fix the wheel. He tightened a nut. So he got a real bargain on the sweater. He wanted a black sweater from real black sheep’s wool. There were no shortcuts for me.”

To say there were no shortcuts was a major understatement. Mrs. St. Jane, the founder of Kairos Philanthropy, was not able to get the wool at all until she flew home to New Zealand for family reasons at Christmas time. After flying for a total of 24 hours across the globe, she had to drive six hours in New Zealand to find a town with the right wool.

“I bought the wool in Napier, New Zealand,” said Mrs. St. Jane. “That is halfway down on the east coast of the north island where my mom lived. I have not been able to find it anywhere else. I got it at a craft’s store and I bought all they had. They said to me, ‘there’s not much call for black wool’. I said, ‘believe me I need it’. White wool is more popular than black or brown, because you can dye it into other colours. So to get brown and black wool is quite difficult.”

She admitted that since she has been back at home in Bermuda she has only stitched about eight inches of the sweater. It’s the spinning itself that she enjoys.

“I was raised on the border of the farm lands and suburbia in Auckland,” she said. “I got interested in weaving and I was encouraged to learn how to spin first. I’ve never really taken up my interest in weaving because I enjoyed the spinning so much.”

An 86-year-old woman taught Mrs. St. Jane how to spin wool, from scratch.

“She taught me how to hand sheer and wash the fleece, card the fleece and get it prepared for spinning,” said Mrs. St. Jane. “She also taught me how to spin with unwashed wool which keeps all the lanolin. This waterproofs it. This is very popular with fishermen because if they get wet they still stay warm.”

Mrs. St. Jane said learning how to hand-sheer a sheep was by far the trickiest part of the project.

“Sheep are wily critters,” she said. “They don’t like being hugged. They are quite feisty so you have to know how to hold them and things like that. I am not sure I could actually do one today. This lady, bless her, she was very particular that I learned how to do it from scratch, otherwise she wouldn’t teach me.”

Mrs. St. Jane said the experience was well-worth it, although she has no hankering to continue sheep-sheering, because it takes a lot of strength and dexterity. She said the sheering does not hurt the sheep. In fact, it helps to keep them cool in the summertime.

“Wool is not the only thing you can spin,” Mrs. St. Jane said. “There are also plant fibres like flax and long grasses you can spin with a hand spinner. You can also spin Angora. You can also spin cat and dog fur if you mix it with wool as well. It makes very very pretty yarn. There is llama, and all sorts of animals you can use.”

Usually, other fibres are mixed with wool, because wool has microscopic claws in it so it grips. The claws make the wool quite sturdy when spun.

To make yarn she uses a gaily painted travelling spinning Jenny, much like the one invented by Lancashire-man James Hargreaves in 1764. Mr. Hargreaves’ spinning Jenny is credited with “breaking the back of the slave trade” because children on “slave wages” could be used instead to work the equipment.

“If you can pedal the treadle and keep your hands going then it is not terribly difficult,” she said.

“I am quite dextrous, so I am quite good at that. You kind of get lulled into a meditative state and off you go. The spinning wheel is quite small. You just pick it up and go, which is why it is called a traveller. I imagine it is the type that was probably used by nomadic people.

“I like the travelling spinning wheel because it is very small,” said Mrs. St. Jane. “You can sit in the park, or sit on the front porch, or take it to Verdmont, as I did all of May. So it is quite mobile.

“Verdmont is around the same age as the design of my wheel, so it was a perfect place to be,” she said.

“I would imagine spinning would have been done in Bermuda at that time. You had to spin yarn to make your fabrics. Sweaters and carpets are made from wool. We have two spinning wheels at Verdmont so I would imagine they were on the Island.”

She said her spinning was well received by tourists and visiting school children at Verdmont.

“One day I arrived late to see a group of school children facing the other way,” she said. “So I went in and set up. The moment the wheel took up they just spun round en mass.

I thought gosh, there are no colourful lights, no electricity, but they were quite mesmerised and fascinated. Coming from New Zealand it astounds me that people have never seen a sheep.”

She said the wool she uses still smells of sheep. “It smells quite luscious,” she said.

“It is not hard to learn to spin wool but I wouldn’t imagine there would be very many people on the Island who would want to learn. Most people are just content to watch.”

Unfortunately, she only bought enough wool in New Zealand to make the black sweater.

“There probably isn’t going to be a lot left over other than to do a few demonstrations,” she said. “I don’t see me doing another sweater.”

However, she said hope might be on the horizon for the production of more sweaters. While at Verdmont, she met some tourists who told her they ran a llama farm on the East Coast of the United States. Llama is one of the alternative fibres that can be spun into yarn.

“I am actually going to take myself on a short holiday to take a look and go to one of their fairs,” she said. “I have never spun llama.”

She said if someone had a spinning wheel she would be happy to teach them how to spin, and the llama farm just might take care of the raw wool problem she faces.