Joan Ruane – cotton spinner extraordinaire

Over the past few days we have had the pleasure of hosting the lovely Joan Ruane, cotton spinning guru from Arizona USA. She has been in NZ teaching some workshops and catching up with friends made during her time living here in the 70s.

Joan was a wonderful source of information and ideas which she freely gave. We spent quite some time working with her making little tweaks to our lace spinning tools to refine them further still. What was fascinating for both her and us was the amount of things that Majacraft make that she and spinners around her didn’t know about. The stylus, High speed head and flyer varieties were all a pleasant surprise for her.

She also gave our local club an excellent talk and demonstration of cotton spinning and the members were buzzing afterwards. Cotton is not spun a lot in NZ and this was a real eye opener to the possibilities.

In the evening we had Pat Old (past Creative Fibre President, author of “In A Spin”, and tutor of note) around to chat with Joan further. We had a great night and Joan was very generous with her knowledge.

She was a wonderful guest and if you are interested in inviting Joan to teach, we would wholeheartedly recommend her. Find her at www.cottonspinning.com

Until next time

Andy