“Members of the Whidbey Weavers Guild concentrate as they spin yarn during a recent gathering. The spinners are, from left, Peggy Tyson, Nita Coates, Anita Pirog, Wendy Ferrier and Pat Oetken.Ken George/staff photoLike the seamstress who stockpiles closets full of fabric because they’re beautiful and the gardener who can’t resist that flower in the nursery though his garden is full, spinners can’t resist fiber.Most spinners spin because they have something to spin. They have animals, or something. Or they just love the tactile nature of it; they love the fiber, said Langley’s Anita Pirog of Whidbey Weaver’s Guild. Lois Fisher of Oak Harbor is in both categories. Back in the 1970s her husband bought her a spinning wheel kit and finished it as a decorator piece. When they returned to the island in the 1990s, they figured a couple sheep would be nice in their pasture. They now have 30 sheep.I thought, with all of that fiber growing in that pasture, I should get my spinning wheel going. And I did. And I am glad I did, she said. Spinning, she said, is a relaxing art. Their blood pressure and heart rate go down as their shoeless feet steadily pulse up and down, the wheel whirs and the yarn forms.As relaxing as it is, though, how much spinning can a spinner do? Fisher has learned that 30 sheep make more wool than she can spin. With April’s sheering coming up, she still has wool from the 2000 harvest to spin. Her husband, she said, would not be happy if she went out and bought fiber to spin. But it’s so tempting.Every Thursday morning in a weekly gathering of several women belonging to the guild at the Race Road fire station south of Coupeville, spinning wheels whirr with strands of yarn in the making, from smooth and taut creamy-colored worsted wool to fluffy blue yarn.Lisa Stillman of Oak Harbor was just getting her wheel set up. She invested about $250 as a beginning spinner into a new wheel, some wool and the various paraphernalia that goes with it. She even bought a niddy noddy, adding she didn’t know what it was for, but the sales clerk suggested she would need it.A niddy noddy, as Pat Oetken explained, pulling her I-shaped contraption out, is either something you clunk yourself in the head with, which happens sometimes, or you wind skeins of yarn on it. It’s the non-technical way of doing it, and there really isn’t any better way of winding a skein. The comment brought on discussion of the many other ways to wind a ball of yarn, such as having your children stand in front of you with their two arms held up like goal posts.There are just as many ways to spin a yarn. Though at first glance it looks like a simple process, how you want the yarn – thick, thin, nubby, smooth – dictates how you hold it, move it, spin it, and more.A beginning weaver has a harder time making a smooth thread, feeding an inconsistent amount of wool into the bobbin. But after years of experience, said Fisher, nubby yarn is difficult to achieve. Everybody is encouraged to save their first yarn, because eventually, you can’t make that slubby [effect], and you have to take a class to learn how to do it, she said.Stillman had yet to achieve even slubby yarn. She was just learning Thursday how to set up her wheel. Eventually, though, she hopes to spin skeins of yarn from her alpacas. That’s what brought her to the informal spin-in in the first place. The women all took their turns, volunteering their expertise as problems arose with threading Stillman’s wheel, and getting her started.Fisher said it’s a great group of women to work with. It’s interesting, because there’s such a varied group of women here, she said. And everybody is so encouraging to each other. I never have felt that I asked a stupid question. I may have – but they never made me feel that way!Whidbey Weaver’s Guild is part of the Northwest Regional Spinning Association. Spinners can find a spin-in nearly every weekend somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, through the association. For more information call Wendy Ferrier, 221-5262. “