Mabel Ross may no longer be the only or the last word on
spinning, but we all owe her a great debt of gratitude. The mother of modern
spinning techniques, Mabel’s scholarship and technical ability provided the
foundations of the diverse spinning skills we enjoy today. After graduating from Edinburgh
University in 1934, Mabel worked in meteorological research and later taught
mathematics and music. According to a biography compiled by the National
Library of Scotland, she learned to weave and spin after her retirement. After
her husband’s death in 1978, she began to teach weaving and spinning and
developed her precise method of handspinning, matching twist to fiber and
grist, based on historical research and her own spinning experiments. Her first
book, The Essentials of Handspinning,
was published in 1980. At the time of her death in 1995, she was an
internationally known lecturer and teacher of weaving and spinning.