Beware, stationary cycling class enthusiasts and flacks. There is a new master spinner amongst you.

Her name is Charlotte Wood, and she works as Rep. Terry Everett’s (R-Ala.) district assistant in Montgomery, Ala. She spins every chance she gets, from exhibitions in museums to demonstrations at rodeos; she’ll even pack up and spin for local schoolchildren.

We’re talking yarn spinning.

Unlike other types of spinning, the kind that Wood has mastered dates back thousands of years to Egyptian cultures. Were it not for enthusiasts like her, the art would have been lost long ago.

Yarn spinning is a technique in which fibers, such as cotton or sheep’s wool, are threaded together to form a thicker, stronger string, which is then used to knit or weave clothing.

Her day job, which she has had for the past six years, can be woven into a metaphor on spinning. A constituent will call with a question or complaint, she says, and Wood has to thread together the various pieces that go into solving or answering the quandary.

Thankfully, she hasn’t had to choose between work and spinning. If a school calls and wants her to do a demonstration, she has a boss who understands. “Usually Mr. Everett’s nice enough to give me a couple of hours to go do a presentation,” Wood said.

Wood, 57, first learned of spinning when her grandmother taught her to knit. Wood made socks and sweaters but soon realized that she couldn’t really say that she had made them, because she was using yarn others had made. Being an art history major, she learned the ways of spinning her own yarn and soon it consumed her spare time.

She even traded in her tiny Mazda Miata for an SUV so that she could cart her spinning wheel to various events.

“I had to give up being flashy and had to become just a suburban housewife,” Wood said.

But it was worth it. “Spinning takes my heart because you’re actually taking something organic from the earth and creating something utilitarian and beautiful.”

Indeed, right next to her heart she wears a necklace with a spindle the size of a quarter made of alabaster that her district director bought her. The spindle, which looks like a miniature donut, was found during an archeological dig in Uzbekistan and dates back to the Bronze Age.  

“It was the perfect gift,” Wood said. “I was just shocked. I nearly about died. I don’t think I’ve taken it off since he gave it to me.”

Wood said working as a customer service representative for Eastern Airlines, where she handled passenger complaints, prepared her the most for her job in Everett’s district office.

Though Wood doesn’t dress the part of a frontier woman at work for Everett, she loves to dress in pioneer clothes when she exhibits her spinning at places like the Pioneer Museum of Alabama because it gives her a sense of living history in the present.

“I love getting into pioneer dress,” Wood said. “I’m glad I don’t have to wear it every day, but I love being a pioneer woman. It’s so much fun to be from another period for a little bit. I get to go back in time and do something that my great-great-grandmother did.”

On display at the museum is a full men’s suit that her great-great-grandmother made, next to the spinning wheel she used to make it.

“I feel right at home,” said Wood, whose family was among the first to settle in Alabama.

A favorite aspect of her hobby is seeing the faces of children change as she explains that the T-shirt they’re wearing would have taken their mother 75 hours of spinning just to make the thread for it.

Wood and her spinning wheel also tend to drop men to their knees.

“I’ve seen a number of grown men get down on their hands and knees and just watch the spinning wheel with fascination,” she said. “There’s something about a machine made of wood that only has foot power to make it work and they sit down on the floor and they look at it real close.”

They had better not get too close, though, because Wood has a certain love for her spinning wheel. So much so that she won’t let it out of her sight during half-day exhibitions, for fear of someone tinkering with it.

“My spinning wheel knows my tension and rhythm and the speed and pressure that I push it and I would feel real proprietary about someone sitting down and fooling with my spinning wheel,” she said.

Wood can’t resist the opportunity to shed light on a time-worn saying. Back in America’s frontier days, she explained, spinners wanted white sheep instead of black sheep because the whiteness would absorb dyes better. The black sheep became the family’s food while the white sheep were revered for their color-absorbing wool.

Hence the term: “black sheep of the family.”

Wood visits Washington about once a year, but says she is scared of knitting or weaving anything for folks in Everett’s office because if she did, she would never hear the end of it and they’d all place their orders with her.

Everett is retiring from office at the end of this year, presenting Wood with the dilemma of where to work next. She has little fear that she will land on her feet, though she said selling the yarn she makes is definitely not a part of the plan.

“I make yarn because I love to make yarn,” she said. “To make yarn for a business? Ewwww — I think I’d stop loving it.”