Hello and welcome I am Kim Bieler the owner of youthful fiber farm and mill And I'm sitting here at home in Harrisburg Oregon Ready to talk with you all a little bit about the slow process of wool And this honestly can be applied to most parts of our lives Uh especially for learning something new but because I own a wool mill and I you all know me mainly for my wool Uh I thought I would focus there because that's really what I've been thinking a lot about before I dive completely in I just want
to remind you that you can head to my website There are all sorts of links in the show notes youthful fiber farm.com where I have got An online course for hand spinners beginning and a little bit along the way as well as fibers that I have Processed at my mill So you can also join the youthful Patrion community If you're looking for more people that love fiber Uh and a better way to connect with me via social zooms and things like that Check that out Okay So the slow process of wool I've been
thinking about this And I will say if you're not where I am As far as this goes I get it If you're not there now if you're not there yet if you never will be where you want to slow down some of this that's okay But maybe you'll glean some little bits of inspiration or some It'll apply to different parts of your life but I've just been thinking about how as makers we seem to a lot of us have kind of Jumped in full bore And then not only are we not necessarily enjoying always the process of
learning But then once we kind of have got the idea of that new craft or not Always present in the making Does that make sense I'm going to talk about it a little bit more I guess I've just been thinking about it in terms of when I see a lot of new hand spinners out there There's frustration And let me tell ya I get it because learning to Hansman can be a little frustrating at times Uh it's like learning anything new You make some strides and then you fall back and you make some strides and then
you fall back and there's definitely a multitasking that happens when your hands spinning So I totally get it But one of the things I've been thinking about is How we can enjoy the process of learning this new thing Versus just wondering why we're not the best at yet or why our yarn doesn't look perfect or why whatever it is we're learning We don't know it yet Like we're so easy to Um Want to know how to do the thing right away And I was talking to Mitch the other night my husband and I and he
kind of brought up well I think COVID has something to do with it Like doesn't everything So now I have COVID to do with it but because everything's shut down and everybody's sort of looked to to learn new crafts and new skills and things they could do at home Uh all of a sudden we were greeted with this Like you can become a master of all the things Very quickly right Like take this class do this do this Cooking whatever it may be you know and maybe somewhere along the line in our desperation
for connection we lost the the joy of the actual learning process And I will say I am guilty of this too Uh it's easy to Beat yourself up a little bit or look at what other people are doing and say why am I not doing it that well why are they learning so much faster than me Why are they so much better than me I think I should quit Ah which is like one of the things that drives me crazy Uh and I hope if nothing else you'll take from this don't quit Especially if it's hands spinning don't quit I
think there are some people that have innate skills where learning something is easier for them Or obviously there are people that Our athletes That have that natural skill to them but that doesn't mean you can't be a wonderful athlete or a wonderful cook oral wonderful hand spinner By taking the time And the patient so Anyway that was kind of you know that's what I wanted to just talk about a little bit here and hopefully you'll you all will Give me some feedback into this I'll talk a little
bit more about um Just rushing the process when it comes to hand spinning because I do see people That do want to quit Uh and they are frustrated or I get comments about it Doesn't look like commercially spun yarn or even just super new hand spinners that forget to celebrate the win of Oh my gosh you just made yarn You took wool in whatever form And you learn the skill to make yarn and it may not be perfect Or maybe you don't think it's beautiful But what if we just looked at it as that you know
like celebrating the wind that you figured out how to add the twist your yarns not braking you could do something with it and that is worth celebrating Uh and I think we just forget to celebrate along the way So I guess this is a podcast about just slowing down and maybe just learning to celebrate the wins that we got And I I recently so not well fairly recently I picked up support spindle which was Huge learning curve for me And of course I don't think social media helps anything I'm watching
all these people on social media thinking well I don't I'm so good at wheel spinning Why can't I do this Well I can it just took patience It took patience And right now I'm trying to learn golf Oh my gosh Not fiber related at all but It's a hard sport to learn and I am not a sporty person You all so Having the patience to learn this new thing that is very very foreign to me I had literally never had a club in my hands other than at a puppet course I don't think that counts Um And hearing about
how people get so frustrated learning to golf or trying to increase their golfing skills It really sort of came back to the same thing for me Like why can't we just Enjoy the process of learning and realize that we're going to move forward and then we're going to stumble and we're going to move forward And then we're going to stumble and to enjoy it along the way right Like what's the point of learning this new thing If it's going to Um if you if you're going to focus on the negative instead of
focusing on the positive Okay So let's talk about how I see people rushing Things How I see myself rushing things This isn't a judgment at all Cause I do all the same things But it's so easy for us to like push away You know like all of these crafts take patients There's going to be imperfections It's gonna take practice And like I said you need to celebrate the wins And I think this applies to all of the things we're learning but in the in Wool specifically the things that I see a lot of our
we're just rushing The process