Christine English discusses her journey in the fibre arts and role as a wool producer.

Christine English discusses her journey in the fibre arts and role as a wool producer.

July 23, 2021

© Kingston Handloom Weavers and Spinners

Shaelagh Cull

Christine English

Zoom

I was drawn to fiber arts partly because I have been involved with sheep on some level since infancy. My favorite toy as a baby or as a young woman was a stuffed lamb my grandmother had made me. When I was in high school, we had sheep to cut grass on a just a rural acreage that we lived on in California. And I had a, I showed a lamb in 4-H at that time and then I went to a university that was an agricultural school and my advisor ended up being a sheep geneticist and I hung out some of the sheep barns. And then when I married in the 80s, my husband and I tried sheep farming, as a way of earning a living. And before that in California, I had just learned privately, taking some private lessons and learned to spin and at a farm auction sale in our early years of farming, I bought a Colback spinning wheel, which he was a local hand producer of wheels at that time. But I really had trouble learning to use it and so I never actually did much in the spinning world at that point. My early attempts from California became things to wrap around, to make lampshades out of, actually. But, when my husband kind of changed his emphasis, farming actually, clearly wasn't going to pay our way, I was hooked on the sheep and was really interested in the fiber part of it and so I started shifting towards fiber directions. We had Corridale ram and a Leicester ram in the flock at that point. And in the 90s, I started really seriously researching importing Romneys and chose Romney because they had, at least some of them had fairly fine, very crampy fleeces, sort of very dual purpose. I'd looked at Border Leicesters and Coopworths, but they were stronger than what I thought a lot of spinners and knitters would want and Romneys were one of the few registered breeds at that point that, at least in the US, was registering colored animals. And I was really interested in colors and the genetics of coloring for sheep, but I ended up importing quite a few Romneys. There were only a few other Romney breeders in Ontario at that time, and so I imported sheep from three different US states and three different Canadian provinces. And then in 1994, we moved farms from a Marlbank Farm to a farm nearer to Kingston, and I was able to join the Kingston Guild at that point. And I also started this Certificate course, which is a six year learning process, that same year, so that became sort of the real beginning of my Kingston area fibre arts was in the early to mid 1990s. I realized that a big benefit has always been the social interaction with the people. And it's always been difficult because I've always lived quite a distance from Kingston, but I've always managed to find someone to commute with, and that social interaction during the commute has actually been one of the benefits too, and I think I have been able to contribute to the Guild my knowledge of sheep as well as products for the other members to use. So, I presented in February of 1995 and April of 1996 to the Guild as their evening program. I'm not sure exactly, I did not keep notes or records of what I said. But it was probably about sheep breeding and sheep selection and probably about skirting fleeces. I have given fleece preparation and skirting demonstrations to the Guelph Guild as well. And at the spinning seminar, and then I think the guild was the one who organized it, there was an international back to back Wool Challenge in 2000. That's an Australian organized thing where you have to blade shear, which means by hand shear a sheep, and it has to be made into a sweater during the course of a day. And I was part of that team and was the blade shearer and brought one of my rams, which provided the fleece. I've contributed prizes for the Guild competitions, many years so it's by, you know, giving rovings or something to winners, and have generally been a resource for questions or source of fiber over the time within the Guild. The Ontario Handweavers ans Spinners organization, which I've been involved with their Certificate Program, which I was in from 1994 to 2000. And then I actually taught in that program as an instructor for two different groups of students after that time. And they also have annual conferences and a big one that note for me was that in 1999, they had a Webs Conference at Geneva Park and that was the 20th anniversary of the Spinning Certificate Program and I was the class that was graduating that year. Wendy Bateman, who had organized that program for a lot of years and was instructor for my group, wrote an article for the Fibre Focus magazine at that time, and it was reprinted in the 2020 summer Fibre Focus. And I had sort of forgotten about it, but I opened up the magazine and there was a picture of me and my class, and I was in it. And then it said that at the Webs Conference, there was a chat line talking about the program, and they had different people representing the past, present, and future of the program and it noted that Chris English was representing the future as a student, the owner of Enuff Romneys and Webmaster. And I had camped out to go to that conference with Beth Abbot from the Guild and some other people. And we attended, I attended a three day dye workshop with Deb Mens, who's a very well known dyer from the States. So I think that was probably one of the high points of my career associated with the spinning world.