Nancy Hains, one of the newest members of the Artisans Co-op in Mancos, has been a weaver and spinner for 15 years. But, she said, shes been working with natural fibers for most of her life.
I grew up in upstate New York and taught chair caning to Boy Scouts, she said. My mother hooked rugs for many years, and Ive worked in many mediums ... even did some picture framing for many years.
Hains was a winemaker for 30 years in the wine country of California and tried out her first sheep 15 years ago. She would let it in the vineyard during the winter, and it would clean up what was left after the grapes were harvested. She went on to get more sheep and a couple llamas after that.
Now, she loves the feel and look of the beautiful blankets that she makes with the wool from her sheep and llamas.
I wanted to raise my own wool, and I needed a reason to have pets, Hains said.
While her sheep and llamas are still in northern California where she came from, she still has a lot of their wool.
She got a lot of experience cutting the wool off of llamas when she helped a friend in Nevada cut the wool from 200 llamas. Now she sends her wool to a man who cleans and cards it for her.
It comes back looking like cotton candy, she said.
She then spins it into long strands, which she dyes, if she wants, and then weaves it into her blankets.
The spinning is fun, according to Hains.
Its like using a potters wheel ... you can do it anywhere ... you dont need electricity and you have something useful when you are done.
It takes about 45 minutes to spin a skein of clean wool, she said.
She has also done some knitting with it, but prefers the weaving.
Its just faster than knitting, she said.
Of her four sheep, two are white and two are gray. Hains usually dyes both of them the same color, five skeins each, and they will come out different shades, she said.
Of her two llamas, one is tan and the other is black and white. She usually leaves them their natural color.
People like the natural colors, she said.
Hains owns four weaving looms, all of different sizes. But her favorite thing to weave is blankets, and she likes to put five or six at a time on a loom.
That way there is less waste, she said.
She will load, or string, enough warp wool on a loom to weave the multiple blankets, which, she says, takes the most time. Then, when she sits down to begin weaving, she can be creative with the colors going the other way, or the weft wool.
When my daughter got married, she got four daughters, too, and I made each of them a blanket, she said. I found out what their favorite colors were and then set up bright warps. I had a ball putting them next to each other.
Her colorful and unique blankets are on display at the Artisans Co-op at Grand and Main in Mancos.
I just like making something from nothing, Hains said. Its fun to see the wool start out on the sheep, then its cleaned, carded, spun and then woven.
Hains recently moved to the Mancos area where shes always felt it was a good place to use her abilities to work with things from nature.
This was a good move for me, Hains said.