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I have been obsessed with cotton since the early 1980s when I learned to spin my home grown colored cotton on a great wheel.  I graduated quickly to the charkha. While I do spin and weave with other fibers, the organic cottons are my passion.   I am involved in research on organic, naturally pigmented, and recycled cottons and in the development of spinning slivers and yarns from these cottons. I am not committed to 100% cotton products; I also blend these cottons with other natural fibers to provide cotton spinners with a wide selection of cotton-rich fibers to choose from.

As an engineer, my background surfaces in my development of tools and techniques; as a weaver, I realized that the charkha spindle was small enough to fit into a shuttle, and if such a thing existed, I could eliminate several steps in the production of cloth. In 1996 I introduced the Khadi Khanoo spindle shuttle so that I could go directly to the loom with my handspun.

Additionally, because I also work with cotton sliver that is colored, I eliminated even more steps between yarn production and patterned cloth production. I began spinning in a color sequence to obtain weft stripes. From there, I added warp stripes using commercial yarns to come up with a single shuttle plaid. The shuttle and the color sequence in the weft combine to simplify the weaving of plaids or weft stripes.

Along the way, I also realized that there is little to no usage of singles in the handweaving world. I began exploring the use and manipulation of yarn energy; any singles yarn has energy, but the amount of twist is very important. I find the hand of a fabric woven with singles is much softer and responsive to the touch than a cloth made with balanced yarns.

In experiments with energy and weave structure, I developed a method to shape cloth on the loom. I call the technique "Crepe & Shape".

There is a dual fascination with both the color play and the dynamics of the cloth made with singles yarns.  The possibilities for live texture are endless, and I expect to be exploring them for a long time.
 

Articles
Arm's Length Spinning, or Single Shuttle Plaid, Spin-Off Fall '96
Spinning Crepe Yarns, SS&D Summer '97
The Carolina Flax Project, SS&D Fall '97
Spinning for a Single Shuttle Plaid, SS&D Winter '98
The Whole Truth about Sett, Weaver's, Spring '98
Lyocell , Weaver's , Fall '98
Crepe & Shape, Spin-Off Fall '99 (see correction to 8-shaft draft/warp-wise channels)
The Stecoah Weavers Project, Fiber Ethics, Winter 2000
Huck Goes Green Web Project, Handwoven, Jan/Feb 2007

Monographs
Algebraic Expressions in Design

DVD
Spinning Cotton on the Charkha