Today I traveled down the most amazing road. I met with a lady, Lois Lame, (yes, that really is her name,) who has agreed to teach me how to use a spinning wheel. I carefully loaded my spinning wheel along with a bag of things that went with the wheel and headed over to her home. As soon as she opened the door I felt like I had traveled into another world. There were spinning wheels of all ages and types all along the walls of the living room. There were old ones and new ones, tall one and short ones.
I arrived at 1:00 and for the first hour she gave me an amazing history lesson. She told me about the Pilgrims and colonist who came over on the Mayflower. There were 101 total and how after they first arrived they found they were unprepared for the elements and lost half of their original number because they didn't have the clothing or food storages that they needed to survive. As more ships arrived they brought different things that they thought would help them survive and somewhere along the line they brought in a few merino sheep. Here is a Merino sheep:
Unfortunately instead of harvesting it's wool and making warm clothing, they ate them. Kinda makes you wonder how we actually came to be the country we are doesn't it? Anyway, they finally got it together and learned that harvesting the wool was more important. Young children were given the job of carding the wool and young girls were given the job of spinning the wool. At some point each home was required to have a certain amount of wool spun each year and they went from home to home to ensure that each member of the community actually had the required amount. In order to earn a little extra money young girls, after spinning enough wool for their own home, would travel from house to house assisting other households in the community to obtain the required amount. That is how the term Spinsters came to be. Now you can shake your head at me over these stories and you can tell me they are not true but Lois told me these stories in ernest and as far as I am concerned it's the truth. The Lois Lame truth.
Here is a picture of the type of wheel I have. It is a Louet S10:
What a beauty eh? Except mine has only one treadle and I can not find a picture of one anywhere.
After the history lesson she suggested we go to the back part of the house which looks out her back yard. I carried the wheel and she found a couple of chairs and set things up. I had mostly alpaca roving and she thought I had best start with wool because she felt it would be easier to learn on. I managed to find a few scraps and she had some scraps but mine needed to be carded a little bit more because it still had some hay pieces in it. I had been given a pair of carders with my wheel and she took one look at them and said, "Sell them." Alrighty then. . . . She explained they were too coarse and I needed finer paddles, not better just finer needles. So she showed me how to card wool and after getting it clean enough, the two ways to remove it off of the carder. (I sure hope that is what they are called. She also called them my paddles. ) If you roll it down on top of itself so that it is a roll the fiber is fluffier and easier to pull when spinning. Loftier she said. But if you go from end to end the fibers are straight up and down and it is a tighter roving. She kept trying to tell me which one was worsted but she had a problem coming up with the right words, she said her brain wasn't working.
I didn't care what it was called, I understood what she wanted me to understand. Kinda scary huh?
Then the big moment arrived. She sat down at my wheel to check it out and she said it was a great little wheel, evenly balanced and with just the right tension. She told me what the parts were and then proceeded to set it up so I could spin. She started it for me then switched places with me, pulled her chair close to mine and tried to explain where my hands were supposed to be and what they were supposed to do.
This is what I was striving for:
"Push and pull, triangles, slide, don't lift your fingers off of the fiber or you will get lumps." The words were coming out of her mouth and I heard them, but my fingers were not following through. I had to laugh because you could definately tell that Lois, at one point in her life was a teacher because no matter what I was doing she was patiently and calmly telling me just how great I was doing. Now I am not an idiot and my wool did not look like something I had ever seen before but after a few more encouraging words I started to imagine that I really was not doing so bad. Just because the thickness was varied and I had lumps here and there it was yarn. Spun yarn and not just anybodies spun yarn it was my first spun yarn. After awhile I started to mess up a little more and all of a sudden Lois said, "Enough, you are starting to overthink this, you have done enough today."
But I got what she was trying to tell me, I understood that my brain was done for the day. She was smiling from ear to ear and she said, "Now I do not want you to get back on this wheel till Friday."
That made me a little sad, but I knew she was right. I settled on spending the next couple of days carding and cleaning the wool that I had so that when Friday comes, I will be ready.
