Published February 16, 2006, http://www.advocateweekly.com/ & The Advocate
Hinsdale MA - When she moved to the United Sates as a teenager, Josefina Speckert didn’t have family, friends, a home or any understanding of the English language to help ground her. Today, the busy therapist, artist and mother to many is woven into the tapestry of her community.
After immigrating, alone, to Miami, FL, from Cuba at age 15, Speckert was placed in an orphanage where she lived for almost two years.
“Those were the saddest moments of my life, the loneliness and the lack of nurturing and affection. That influenced the direction of my life,” Speckert said recently.
The direction in which Speckert traveled eventually brought her to 111 Pittsfield Road in Hinsdale, where she has lived for the past 10 years with her husband of nearly 40 years, her parents, a 7-year-old foster child and an uncounted number of pets and farm animals, many of which were rescue adoptions. Mother to five daughters and two sons (natural and adopted), grandmother to eight grandchildren and foster mother to so many children she has lost count, Speckert is rarely alone and doesn’t have time to be lonely these days.
In addition to running the family farm, she works four days a week as the Director of Behavioral Health and Substance Abuse at the Hilltown Health Center, and holds a part-time job as a clinical supervisor for the visitation program at the YMCA. She and her husband, Tom Speckert, the executive director of Goodwill Industries, also run Abi’s Web, a craft studio over their barn, which they opened in 1996.
Speckert was christened “Abi” by her grandchildren years ago. The nickname is a shortening of “abuela,” the Spanish word for grandmother. And, as weavers selling their craft, “web” was the perfect description of their new business, which turns the raw wool shorn from their farm animals – angora goats, Suri alpacas, Navajo sheep and a “guard” llama named Stewart, among others – into woven and knitted crafts. The Speckerts create their art throughout the year and sell mainly at wool festivals and local county fairs between April and September. In additional to their own handmade clothes, blankets, and rugs, they also carry crafts made by local artists on consignment and a plethora of spinning and knitting supplies – everything from New Zealand possum or soybean yarn to wood “nitty notties” (to skein yarn by hand) and antique spinning wheels, which Tom Speckert restores to working condition.
At a recent interview, amidst muffled braying, baaing, honking, crowing, quacking and giggling from the barn and the yard, Speckert sat at one of her many spinning wheels and explained her love of spinning as she worked the wheel with her hands and feet.
She began spinning in 1994 when her son, Steven, was diagnosed with a terminal illness. She became his primary caretaker and was looking for ways to relieve the everyday stress of the constant responsibilities.
Hinsdale MA - When she moved to the United Sates as a teenager, Josefina Speckert didn’t have family, friends, a home or any understanding of the English language to help ground her. Today, the busy therapist, artist and mother to many is woven into the tapestry of her community.
After immigrating, alone, to Miami, FL, from Cuba at age 15, Speckert was placed in an orphanage where she lived for almost two years.
“Those were the saddest moments of my life, the loneliness and the lack of nurturing and affection. That influenced the direction of my life,” Speckert said recently.
The direction in which Speckert traveled eventually brought her to 111 Pittsfield Road in Hinsdale, where she has lived for the past 10 years with her husband of nearly 40 years, her parents, a 7-year-old foster child and an uncounted number of pets and farm animals, many of which were rescue adoptions. Mother to five daughters and two sons (natural and adopted), grandmother to eight grandchildren and foster mother to so many children she has lost count, Speckert is rarely alone and doesn’t have time to be lonely these days.
In addition to running the family farm, she works four days a week as the Director of Behavioral Health and Substance Abuse at the Hilltown Health Center, and holds a part-time job as a clinical supervisor for the visitation program at the YMCA. She and her husband, Tom Speckert, the executive director of Goodwill Industries, also run Abi’s Web, a craft studio over their barn, which they opened in 1996.
Speckert was christened “Abi” by her grandchildren years ago. The nickname is a shortening of “abuela,” the Spanish word for grandmother. And, as weavers selling their craft, “web” was the perfect description of their new business, which turns the raw wool shorn from their farm animals – angora goats, Suri alpacas, Navajo sheep and a “guard” llama named Stewart, among others – into woven and knitted crafts. The Speckerts create their art throughout the year and sell mainly at wool festivals and local county fairs between April and September. In additional to their own handmade clothes, blankets, and rugs, they also carry crafts made by local artists on consignment and a plethora of spinning and knitting supplies – everything from New Zealand possum or soybean yarn to wood “nitty notties” (to skein yarn by hand) and antique spinning wheels, which Tom Speckert restores to working condition.
At a recent interview, amidst muffled braying, baaing, honking, crowing, quacking and giggling from the barn and the yard, Speckert sat at one of her many spinning wheels and explained her love of spinning as she worked the wheel with her hands and feet.
She began spinning in 1994 when her son, Steven, was diagnosed with a terminal illness. She became his primary caretaker and was looking for ways to relieve the everyday stress of the constant responsibilities.
“A friend said ‘you should start spinning; it’s very therapeutic.’” And I said, ‘OK, what’s that?’” Steven couldn’t move and couldn’t speak, but he could watch me spin for hours,” she said. Although she is a psychotherapist with a master’s degree in counseling from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, she discovered that spinning not only calmed her, but also provided her with a creative outlet and a functional finished product. No one is ever cold at the Speckert household, thanks to the woolen products she creates from yarn spun nearly every day.
“It’s probably the most relaxing activity I can think of. If I told people how much better this is than psychotherapy, I’d be out of work,” she said with a laugh.
Speckert shares her mastery of knitting, spinning and weaving by running an open house and classes in her studio the first and third Monday of every month from 1 to 4 p.m.
“We have tea and cookies too,” she added.
A knitter since age 9, Speckert also practices the art of felting, where the raw fiber is wetted and worked together with the hands or feet until the hairs fuse to produce the felt material. There is a loom in the studio for weaving, as well, but she said that is her least favorite activity in the fiber art world.
“Tom does most of the weaving. He likes the complicated patterns best,” Speckert said.
She said she finds the weaving tedious and time consuming, requiring more planning and patience – not to mention mathematical calculations in creating a pattern – than spinning.
Speckert prefers working the fiber (unprocessed wool) instead of roving, (cleaned and processed wool). Fiber, when it has not been processed, carded or washed, is called “on the grease.”
“When you spin on the grease, you have a lot of lumps and bumps which makes for a more unique yarn,” she said.
Unique or “a little bit of a ‘60’s rebel” is also the way Speckert describes herself. She has a tattoo on each ankle and one on her forearm, each representing her birth place – the Cuban flag bordered by broken chains, a Cuban Bee Hummingbird (Mellisuga helenae) and a Cuban postage stamp from a letter her aunt mailed to her.
Her friends and family call her unconventional or weird, depending on their mood. Likewise, her husband, when given an art class assignment to draw the essence of the most important person in his life, drew a brick wall, cracked in the middle, to represent his wife.
Celebrating their 40th anniversary on April 15, the couple met while both were attending St. Louis University in Missouri. She was waiting for the bus and saw him walking down the street. She said “hi” and asked him to hold her books while she went into a nearby store to buy a soda.
“I just grabbed something out of the cooler and when I got back out there, I realized I had bought an orange soda. I have never before, or since, drunk orange soda. It was awful, but I was in a hurry to get back to this nice young man.”
Seven months later, they were married.
“It’s a very hard job to be married for so long,” she said.
Of all her jobs, however, – spinner, teacher, artist, farmer, psychotherapist, businesswoman, wife, parent, grandparent, and foster parent, she finds parenting – foster, natural or adoptive - the hardest job, but always the most rewarding.
“The hardest thing about being a foster parent is the lack of credibility you have in the system because people think you do it for money. You can’t feed a kid on what they pay per day, but even if that small amount of money was an incentive, you still have to want to do it for the child.”
The Speckerts foster children with emotional or physical challenges and, thus take only one child at a time to devote as much attention to them as possible. The children most enjoy being with the animals. Speckert feels it’s a good form of therapy. The animals too have often overcome challenges and difficulties of their own, and some have been bred specifically for children to love. Their two miniature Shetland ponies came from Personal Ponies, Inc., a national organization that breeds the ponies to place with disabled or terminally ill children. Petoot or Tootie, for short, was born with a twisted leg.
“He’s my love, and he keeps up with all the other animals in spite of his disability,” Speckert said.
Millie, a Navajo Churro sheep, was raised by hand on the Speckert farm, when her mother died giving birth. The Navajo were almost extinct in the 70’s and today number only in the 1,000’s in the U.S.
One thing Speckert is convinced will never be extinct in her life is hope. Describing a typical Thanksgiving dinner at her home, Speckert said, “We have the perfunctory turkey always – Americans have to have turkey – but raw fish, beans and rice and eel too. Our family is a blend of people from China, Malaysia, Cuba, Vietnam and Central America. Several languages are spoken at the same time, and I find that so heartwarming. It feels so wonderful that we can all gather at the same table and even talking different languages, we’re still one family.”
Speckert has gathered plenty of wool but little moss over her lifetime. Whether it’s a blended family or a woven rug, caring for others or creating a sweater, Speckert speaks the language of love, at home within herself, and with her family – four legged and two.
“Every family member is a treasure to me,” she said.
Shearing of the sheep takes place in May, and visitors to the farm and studio at Abi’s Web are always welcome, but please call (413-655-0265) or email: tomspeckert@netzero.net before dropping by.
Speckert shares her mastery of knitting, spinning and weaving by running an open house and classes in her studio the first and third Monday of every month from 1 to 4 p.m.
“We have tea and cookies too,” she added.
A knitter since age 9, Speckert also practices the art of felting, where the raw fiber is wetted and worked together with the hands or feet until the hairs fuse to produce the felt material. There is a loom in the studio for weaving, as well, but she said that is her least favorite activity in the fiber art world.
“Tom does most of the weaving. He likes the complicated patterns best,” Speckert said.
She said she finds the weaving tedious and time consuming, requiring more planning and patience – not to mention mathematical calculations in creating a pattern – than spinning.
Speckert prefers working the fiber (unprocessed wool) instead of roving, (cleaned and processed wool). Fiber, when it has not been processed, carded or washed, is called “on the grease.”
“When you spin on the grease, you have a lot of lumps and bumps which makes for a more unique yarn,” she said.
Unique or “a little bit of a ‘60’s rebel” is also the way Speckert describes herself. She has a tattoo on each ankle and one on her forearm, each representing her birth place – the Cuban flag bordered by broken chains, a Cuban Bee Hummingbird (Mellisuga helenae) and a Cuban postage stamp from a letter her aunt mailed to her.
Her friends and family call her unconventional or weird, depending on their mood. Likewise, her husband, when given an art class assignment to draw the essence of the most important person in his life, drew a brick wall, cracked in the middle, to represent his wife.
Celebrating their 40th anniversary on April 15, the couple met while both were attending St. Louis University in Missouri. She was waiting for the bus and saw him walking down the street. She said “hi” and asked him to hold her books while she went into a nearby store to buy a soda.
“I just grabbed something out of the cooler and when I got back out there, I realized I had bought an orange soda. I have never before, or since, drunk orange soda. It was awful, but I was in a hurry to get back to this nice young man.”
Seven months later, they were married.
“It’s a very hard job to be married for so long,” she said.
Of all her jobs, however, – spinner, teacher, artist, farmer, psychotherapist, businesswoman, wife, parent, grandparent, and foster parent, she finds parenting – foster, natural or adoptive - the hardest job, but always the most rewarding.
“The hardest thing about being a foster parent is the lack of credibility you have in the system because people think you do it for money. You can’t feed a kid on what they pay per day, but even if that small amount of money was an incentive, you still have to want to do it for the child.”
The Speckerts foster children with emotional or physical challenges and, thus take only one child at a time to devote as much attention to them as possible. The children most enjoy being with the animals. Speckert feels it’s a good form of therapy. The animals too have often overcome challenges and difficulties of their own, and some have been bred specifically for children to love. Their two miniature Shetland ponies came from Personal Ponies, Inc., a national organization that breeds the ponies to place with disabled or terminally ill children. Petoot or Tootie, for short, was born with a twisted leg.
“He’s my love, and he keeps up with all the other animals in spite of his disability,” Speckert said.
Millie, a Navajo Churro sheep, was raised by hand on the Speckert farm, when her mother died giving birth. The Navajo were almost extinct in the 70’s and today number only in the 1,000’s in the U.S.
One thing Speckert is convinced will never be extinct in her life is hope. Describing a typical Thanksgiving dinner at her home, Speckert said, “We have the perfunctory turkey always – Americans have to have turkey – but raw fish, beans and rice and eel too. Our family is a blend of people from China, Malaysia, Cuba, Vietnam and Central America. Several languages are spoken at the same time, and I find that so heartwarming. It feels so wonderful that we can all gather at the same table and even talking different languages, we’re still one family.”
Speckert has gathered plenty of wool but little moss over her lifetime. Whether it’s a blended family or a woven rug, caring for others or creating a sweater, Speckert speaks the language of love, at home within herself, and with her family – four legged and two.“Every family member is a treasure to me,” she said.
Shearing of the sheep takes place in May, and visitors to the farm and studio at Abi’s Web are always welcome, but please call (413-655-0265) or email: tomspeckert@netzero.net before dropping by.
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