Dudleyspinner Tie Dye Roving/ Combed Top Old Crone

This is my bathroom rug I have been working on knitting with dudleyspinner.com unspun roving.  I am knitting up squares and sewing them together. This makes a very soft and cushy rug.

This past week I was in a forum discussing selling yarn. I guess I stuck my foot in it, again. I suggested that if someone sells crappy hand spun yarn, it reflects badly on all of us that sell hand spun. And mentioned that at guild sales, everything is juried.
Each item is inspected and approved before it goes onto the sales floor.

This is a group, Fiber Artists and Yarn Spinners, that I have been active in, very supportive of new spinners. I have walked several people through the process of setting up a spinning wheel to start spinning. Or helped them decide if a wheel for sale was a good investment. I have not been cruel, or condescending to new spinners.

 How is saying that there are standards being a bitch?  I have seen yarns for sale that would just fall apart, are poorly spun. It is called "Art Yarn" so that is not a problem for the seller. Hand spun yarn is a niche market. There are way more spinners than buyers. Which is why I don't sell much yarn, but I don't list much yarn in my Etsy store.  I sell fiber to the spinners, undyed fiber to dyers.

 I then saw a few posts from one of the people in that group talking about what a menopausal jealous bitch I am. How can I stand to live this way. It was suggested that my yarn sales are bad, so badmouthing beginners was how I was trying to up my sales.

 I was called names I would never call anyone, and I doubt they would say that to me in person. This was on a members private wall.  The people saying these things thought I could not see what they were saying, but I am FB friends with several of them. I liked the post  to let them know I could see it, and  the privacy setting was changed.

I was shocked and feel like I am wasting time being helpful to a group of people that feel that my old crone head  deserves no respect. I am not expecting anyone to bow down to my prowess as a spinner, or teacher or helper of beginners, but the anonymous  nature of the internet makes it easy to badmouth that "catty snotty bitch" without being accountable.

When I started spinning three decades ago, there was no internet, no You Tube to watch someone spinning or prepping wool. The Spin Off magazine was one of the only sources of information available. Wool was not available in the beautiful colors we have today. It was usually a grungy fleece given to me by someone that didn't have any other place to get rid of it. I used what I grew and what I could find, as we all did in the 80's. I processed it mostly by myself. I learned in a vacuum mostly.

I joined a guild and found some classes, I learned so much from those classes. I learned that I was talented with color, and started dying wool.   My experience is something that I value, even if others do not.

Yarn bowl made by Leanne Kilmer