Participants celebrated St. Distaff's Day at the Ewe and I in Chehalis in January 2016. The event featured mini-demonstrations and spinning competitions.
The Ewe and I in Chehalis celebrated St. Distaff's Day in January 2016 by holding an event where participants were able to learn more about spinning fiber.
You have probably never heard of St. Distaff.
That’s because she isn’t real.
But that particular detail has not prevented St. Distaff's Day from being celebrated each year on Jan. 7 for the last 600 years or so.
The annual gathering of the tight knit fiber community is timed to fall on the day following the 12 days of Christmas.
According to Nancie Willey, a lanolin lobbyist at the Ewe and I yarn and needle crafting shop in Chehalis, the holiday has been celebrated since the 1400s when the addition of official holidays on the Catholic calendar was reserved solely for honoring saints. In order to skirt that inconvenient protocol, the legend of Saint Distaff was born.
“St. Distaff is the patron saint of spinners,” said Willey. “I think we like the tongue in cheek aspect that it’s a saint that never existed. It’s just an excuse to get together and party for one more day.”
This will be the second year in a row that Ewe and I has hosted the homespun gathering. Last year, about 40 fiber enthusiasts and one vendor showed up. This year, there are three vendors booked, and organizers are hoping for another good turnout.
“We’ll have some spinning competitions and fun and basically a gathering of people who spin fiber into yarn,” said Willey, who noted that hosting the celebration was one of the first goals established by Ewe and I when it opened last year. “There wasn’t a local St. Distaff’s Day celebration, and we have a lot of spinners and fiber people who have traveled to other places just because it is a fun day to get together with other spinners. It’s just a fun thing to do in the middle of winter.”
The vendors include a drop spindle company from Portland, an independant fiber dyer from Eugene and a custom spinning wheel company from Winlock.
Willey was perhaps most excited about the wheel makers from Winlock, known as SpinOlution, coming around.
“They have a full line of spinning wheels, I think they make seven different models,” said Willey. “They have some innovative, practical things that make their wheels popular. They are great teaching wheels because they are easy to use. They are well designed.”
Since the holiday’s earliest incarnations when spinning was largely the realm of women (other than commercial spinning which, as custom dictated at the time, had to be done by men) St. Distaff’s Day has been an event largely curated by women.
“The spinners decided, ‘Hey wait, the men don’t have to plow the fields, it’s too wet or whatever, so maybe we should have a gathering now before everyone has to go back to work,’” explained Willey.
Since St. Distaff’s Day was created as a social event as much as a craft show, the celebration has always included games and other shenanigans. Wives used to get a good laugh by dousing their husbands with water from the milk pail. Willey says that husbands, and men of all stripes, are safe and welcome at Ewe and I, and that the crowd favorite activity from last year was a blindfolded spinning competition.
“Worldwide I think it has become more of a multi-gender practice,” said Willey. “I don’t think we have as many men who spin religiously as women, but we do have men who spin.”
The St. Distaff’s Day celebration will take place from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday at Ewe and I, which is located at 566 N. Market Blvd. in Chehalis. For additional information, call 360-345-1506.
