Spinning A Yarn

In an attempt to justify the existence of our one and only sheep, I am finally getting around to using the wool that we worked so hard to sheer off of her last spring. The wool had been washed twice and allowed to dry on a sunny porch, but after that it sat in a clean pig feed bag all fall. I had been talking with my parents during the course of the summer and fall about borrowing the spinning wheel that they have had (and never used) to attempt to spin yarn from wool. My husband had been adding his healthy dose of skeptism to the idea, but finally I prevailed when this last week my parents brought down my great grandmother's spinning wheel.

It is my dad's one and only heirloom piece of furniture from his grandmother, so he made it very clear that this thing is only on loan for a while. This is probably a good thing because I am already very nervous having a 110 year old piece of furniture in a house with five kids running laps through the kitchen. Last know wool spun on this wheel was somewhere around 1900.

I have seen this spinning wheel many times before, but I have not actually seen one work since I was in second grade when there were some women that came to the school and demonstrated how things were done in the "olden days". They showed us spinning wool and making candles, and one other thing that escapes my somewhat porous memory. Needless to say, despite remembering the demonstration of spinning, I don't remember doing it. Thankfully, somewhere in the piles of books that I have inherited from my grandmother, there was a spinning and dyeing book.

I tend to be very much a "learn by doing" kind of a person. It takes a lot of patience to actually stop and read an instruction manual. I flipped open the book and glanced at the pictures and read a few captions. Good enough....now let's do it!

But here is the thing about spinning wheels.....they are not intuitive. They are simple in design and the concept is fairly straight forward - I pull and the spinning wheel spins the fibers thus making yarn. This is much easier said than done.

This particular spinning wheel is a Saxony wheel which is one that you treadle the foot pedal to keep the bobbin and the fly wheel spinning while simultaneously using both your hands to stretch and feed in the fibers that are being spun. There are a few too many sides of the brain required to accomplish all those above listed tasks - seriously, this made rubbing my tummy and patting my head very simple.

The first night I carded some of the wool which, as it turns out, also takes some getting used to. I have a lovely set of scratches on my arm from one of the carding combs to prove this point. I then sat down at approximately 9 pm to start figuring out how the spinning wheel really works.

This particular spinning wheel felt like and old friend. When I was a kid I used to play with it up in my parent's bedroom where they kept it. I would sit and marvel at it as I worked the foot pedal and made the wheel go around and around as fast as I could. I never could quite figure out how it actually spun anything. So, starting late in the evening with a cup of coffee at my side, I sat and fiddled with it, looked at the book and then fiddled some more.

I started with only one string on the wheel and couldn't figure out how the bobbin and the fly wheel were supposed to go different speeds until it dawned on me that maybe there needs to be two strings on the wheel. Looked at the book.....yep, they all have two strings....okay, time to find and tie another string onto the pulley that runs the fly wheel. Voila! By this point it was 11:30 pm.

Now the book says to start with 18 inches of spun yarn. How exactly is that supposed to happen when you don't have a way to spin it? Spinning yarn by hand is brutal, and 18 inches of it would have taken me until 3 am. Of course what I didn't realize at the time was that it doesn't have to be perfect to start out. A foot of crappy hand spun yarn would have probably worked. I resorted to regular yarn that I have lying around and figured that I could tie into that after I got it going. Once I hooked up the regular yarn to the bobbin and started spinning, it went like a breeze....until I added in the carded wool and then it would promptly gum up and derail the entire operation by breaking whatever thread I had on the bobbin. It was now 1 am.

Why so late? I have no idea what kept me up and going. I had been struggling all day at work to keep my eyes open and my head above water, but when I sat down with that wheel I felt happy and content. I honestly think I could have probably worked with it all night. I didn't feel rushed to get it going or figure it out and I was very content to have to restart again and again. I simply loved the rhythm of the thing, the gentle "whirring" of the wheel once I got it going, and the lanolin that started to build up on my fingers from messing with the wool. I pictured my grandma and her mom before her sitting with this same wheel and it made me feel connected to them. Crazy as it may seem, I felt like they were there with me. Chuckling at my fumbling fingers and encouraging me to try it just once more as my grandma had done so many times before with other craft projects that she had taught me. She was the epitome of patience and skill with doing things by hand. It was only because I knew the morning would come quickly and I had plans to take the kiddos sledding that finally convinced me to turn in. Total accumulated spun yarn - zip! New found appreciation for all my ancestors - huge!

Since Tuesday night I have worked with it more and steadily climbed the steep learning curve. By Wednesday night I had a small ball of crudely spun wool with multiple breaks and varying degrees of thickness. By Thursday night I had more yarn spun, slightly thinner and more even in the thickness of the strand. I am hoping that maybe by the end of the weekend I will have the rest of the wool carded and spun with some degree of competency and then I can embark on the dyeing process.

The biggest question that I hear uttered from my husband's lips periodically as he trips over my bag of wool or has to navigate around me in the middle of the kitchen is, "Why?" Why am I bothering to learn how to spin one sheep's worth of wool? The reasons are two fold. 1) It gives Lambie a reason for living. How insane is it to keep this crazy, random sheep fed and housed if she does not give us anything in return. Sheep are good for two things - meat and fiber and as much as I was against getting her in the first place, I honestly can't see taking her to the butcher at this point, not when she has spent the first months of her life living in my entry way behind the door - that practically makes her family. 2) it is something that I have always wanted to learn to do.

I totally understand that it is much easier to go to a yarn shop and pick up whatever yarn I like in any color and style, but I know this sheep and her wool, I know what had to be done to get the wool, and I know this spinning wheel and the ancestors that used it before me. I feel more connected to this yarn than any that I have ever picked up in any shop. It may not be the finest and it may end up being difficult to knit with, but I have raised, sheered, carded and spun every fiber of this yarn. I like to think that Grandma would be proud.