Joan has been teaching spinning for over 40 years. As a graduate from Springfield College, she taught in the Tucson public schools before going to New Zealand in 1971. In New Zealand at that time there were 3 million people and 30 million sheep, she learned to spin from Ruth Reid. Returning home to Florida a year later, she brought with her two fleeces, a Pipy wheel and a flick carder.

Joan began taking classes and workshops but the one workshop that really changed her direction was Persis Grayson’s. Persis knew how to instill a love of spinning and she exposed her students to all kinds of fibers. Cotton was the fiber Joan fell in love with. So she went directly to Harry and Olive Linder who were known experts in cotton spinning and had published a small but definitive book Hand Spinning Cotton.

While in Florida, Joan and her business partner, Judy Kates, opened a warehouse shop called Spin & Dye. Joan imported wheels and fleeces from New Zealand and the shop offered supplies for local spinners and dyers. In 1980 the Ruane family moved back to Tucson and Joan opened a store called Spin & Weave, which she operated for 12 years.

Wanting a quieter life, Joan and her husband Bob moved to the unique and historical little town of Bisbee, Arizona where she opened another store, Southwest Corner. She used it as a venue for a mail-order business to supply cotton fiber and equipment to spinners around the world. She also established fiber retreats, bringing in instructors from all over the United States and founding the Bisbee Fiber Arts Guild as a center for the Fiber Arts in southwest Arizona. As teaching consumed more of her time, she handed the sales part of the business to Jill and Lura of Brookmoore Creations who market her "Easy to Spin" cotton fiber while she focuses on teaching and traveling all over the world.

Life changes and after producing four DVDS, writing many articles for fiber magazines, plus two books and adding many instructional You Tubes to the internet Joan is wanting to slow down and do less traveling to teach. Thus, Joan will be concentrating on teaching from Tucson and bringing in outside fiber artists to enhance fiber education in Arizona. To her delight she has found two wonderful young women* who will be taking her place on the road; Julie Drogsvold from Sierra Vista, AZ and Melanie Duarte of Portland, ME. Also, a big change is that Lunatic Fringe Yarns of Fruitland, ID will be the distributor of “Easy to Spin” cotton sliver both retail and wholesale to shops.

*see bottom of this page