What do you do for fun when you live 180 miles from the closest town? Read? Run? Count desert cacti?

Jason A. Frizzelle/The Daily Reflector (ENLARGE)

SPINNING 100 PERCENT cashmere yarn, Karen Feegle sits at the front of her shop. On the walls behind her are the finished skeins of yarn, ready to be purchased at Clara's Yarn Shop in Winterville.

CURIOUS ABOUT SPINNING? View the video from Karen Feegle's shop

Karen Feegle was living in Yuma, Ariz., with her Marine husband and found there wasn't much to do.

She needed a hobby: So she learned to make her own yarn.

Feegle purchased a drop spindle — an ancient tool for making yarn — while attending a fair in Missouri.

"I just thought it was interesting," she said.

The tool is a straight stick with a whorl (a flat disc) and a small hook to guide the newly created yarn. A bat — a ball of unspun fibers — is gently pulled into the spinning motion of dangling spindle. As the fibers are twisted, the air is removed and a length of yarn is created.

But she didn't know how to use her drop spindle. Through some Internet research and chatting online with people, she received some direction.

"I was determined to figure it out," she said. "I was standing on chairs to keep the spindle going."

Using a drop spindle requires coordination and patience until you get the hang of it, literally. The weight of the spindle is what helps spin the yarn.

"I spun on that for two years," she said. "I'd have it with me everywhere. I'd even spin in the waiting room at the doctor's office."

Feegle then brought home a spinning wheel.

"I remember her bringing it into the house," Feegle's daughter Crystal Boone said. "She's always been crafty, but all I could think was, 'this is very odd.'" Boone was 10 years old when her mom brought home that first wheel and began spinning on it herself when she was 11.

"Then I did it on and off for about 12 years," Boone, 23, said. "I've been doing it seriously now for four to five years."

After Feegle, 42, had been spinning for several years, she worked at Tryon Palace in New Bern for two years demonstrating her skills.

Now her hobby has turned into a business.

Earlier this month, Feegle opened Clara's Yarn Shop, named for Boone's daughter, in downtown Winterville. Inside the front door of the tiny building, skeins — continuous strands of yarn arranged in a loose coil — line the wall in a rainbow of colors, textures and thicknesses handmade by Feegle and her daughter.

But how does a person make yarn?

The first step to making yarn is selecting a bat, a collection of fibers like wool, to be cleaned. Wool contains lanolin and soil, which need to be removed before being made into yarn. Lanolin is a natural, waterproof emollient in a sheep's coat that is often used in beauty products.

"Old, blue Dawn dish soap works the best for getting the lanolin out," Feegle said. "It contains alcohol, which is a degreaser."

The bat is then rinsed several times and dried. The bat can be dyed at this point.

Next is carding the bat into a roving. Natural fibers have microscopic scales or barbs that catch as its combed. Carding aligns these fibers in the same direction through this process.

"Then it gets rolled up, kind of like a cigar," Feegle said as she demonstrated this step.

The roving is then ready to be spun into yarn. With a delicate touch, Feegle twists the roving onto the spinning wheel making it into yarn.

Her foot presses the treadle in a hypnotic rhythm to keep the wheel spinning at a continuous speed.

She makes it look easy, and good music helps her maintain her rhythm.

"I don't watch much TV, but I do like to listen to the radio," Feegle said.

Feegle uses the fur of animals such as buffalo, alpaca, llama, yak, rabbit (angora) and plant fibers — including cotton, flax and corn silk to make yarn.

With friends who raise animals throughout the United States, Feegle reserves the fleece up to a year in advance for making yarn.

To make 800 yards of yarn, it takes her about six hours of spinning without distractions.

"You can spin on something as simple as a metal hook," Feegle said. "It's slow, but you can do it."

She carries a metal hook — made from a piece of heavy-gauge wire — in her purse, just in case she gets bored.

The mystic draws Feegle to make new yarns everyday.

"It's the process that fascinates me," she said. "I love to see how I can take a fiber and end up with a finished product."

Feegle's collection of antique and reproduction spinning wheels is on display in her store; she plans to hold spinning classes in addition to knitting and crocheting.

"I love the look on the faces of adults and children when they get how it's done," she said.

Feegle also hand dyes her prepared bats and already spun yarn.

"It depends on my mood," Feegle said. "Sometimes I'll dye before I spin, sometimes after."

Hand dyeing is literally like hand painting, according to Feegle.

"I'll never be able to paint like Rembrandt," she said. "But I can do this."

She uses protein based dyes, since the fibers are also protein based. She's been mixing dyes for so long, she doesn't measure anything.

"Asking me how much dye is like asking someone how they make gravy," Feegle said with a chuckle.

Food-grade citric acid, which acts as a fixative, is also added to the dye.

"It's the same kind of acid that is used in sour candies," Feegle said.

For a single-color yarn, Feegle makes a pot of dye on the stove and adds the yarn or bats.

"When the dye is all absorbed, the water will be completely clear again," she said. "That is called striking. It's really cool to see that happen."

To create a multicolored yarn, Feegle mixes several bowls of dye and pours it over the natural colored yarn.

With industrial-sized plastic wrap covering a table, she lays out what she wants to dye. Then she pours the dye in sections to created a multicolored yarn.

"I tend to do more blue/greens and burgundy," she said. "I tend to get stuck and really have to fight to not always do the same colors."

The same dye can be used on two batches of the same yarn and the colors will be drastically different.

"It's just the nature of the fibers," Feegle said. "Dyeing is like opening Christmas presents; you're never really sure what you're going to get."

In addition to outsourcing fleece, Feegle raises three German angora rabbits so she can harvest their fur.

Feegle brought one of her rabbits into her shop to demonstrate how she shears their fur.

Smokey Pokey looks like a giant fuzzy rabbit's foot as he sits in his traveling cage. His cage at home is much larger.

"I spoil them," Feegle said. "They live inside with me during the summer because it's cool, and they have hutches outdoors for the winter. They love winter."

Smokey Pokey likes to snuggle against Feegle's chest and is relatively low-key.

"It's pretty typical for the breed," Feegle said, "which was one of the reasons why I chose them."

Smokey Pokey's coat is a light, silvery gray with fine, black hairs — called guard hairs — that keeps the fur from matting and tangling.

"He's kind of slow, and he's gray, so Smokey Pokey," Feegle said.

She shears her rabbits two or three times a year with minimal equipment: a small, sharp pair of scissors, scissor sharpener, a brush and blood stop. Blood stops halt bleeding and are used only if the rabbit is accidentally cut during shearing.

"Some people do use electric shears," she said. "I prefer scissors."

From one shearing, Smokey Pokey will yield about seven ounces of fur, which produces about 400 yards of yarn, enough for a typical women's sweater.

"You can get eight (ounces), but that includes the feet and tail, which are sometimes not as nice," she said.

Rabbits are ideal for making yarn because their fur doesn't require washing before carding, and the fur is seven times warmer than wool.

Feegle carefully cuts small sections of fur from Smokey Pokey's back and gently pulls the fur from his body. The fur is about 3 inches long.

"I typically clip in a circular pattern," she said. "I just follow the body and feel it with my fingers."

While being sheared, Smokey Pokey relaxes and kicks out his back legs.

"He knows it's his mommy," Feegle said. "And he has nothing to worry about."

Contact features writer Kelley Kirk-Swindell at 329-9596 or kkirkswindell@coxnc.com.