Woolen and Wonderful

I have had the pleasure of rediscovering a favorite hobby of mine: spinning. After running out of my last batch of wool, I was hesitant to buy more (I do try to live frugally). However, when a friend of mine announced that she was going to a sheep and wool festival, I couldn’t resist asking her to get some wool for me.

That spurred a conversation about how fun it would be to create a blog series on the journey of the wool. As she lives hundreds of miles away from me, she had to send me the wool, after which I would spin it, send it back, and she would knit something from it.

The first adventure in this journey involved the festival itself, which I will link to here, my friend Dorian’s blog (she speaks of this specific wool toward the end of her post).

The second adventure rests with me, the spinner. I was overjoyed when I received the wool in the mail, and could not wait to begin spinning.

She had sent me a bundle of both black wool and white, and I set out to work as soon as I could. I was fascinated by the different textures of the wool; the white was smooth and easy to spin rather quickly. The black wool felt a little more coarse, and it was more difficult to spin a consistent thread.

The string that resulted is called single-ply yarn, meaning it is one strand. From here I took the black yarn and the white yarn and spun them together, creating two-ply yarn. Two-ply will be much easier to work with because it is less likely to twist back on itself, and it is also stronger than single-ply.

I had some leftover white wool, so I spun a little bit of white two-ply yarn to finish it off. I am proud of how it turned out, and of how my little drop spindle has held up all these years. Now I get to send it to my friend to see what she makes with it. Back to you, Dorian.

A Respectable Young Lady

I got the “lady” thing down. When I was a girl, I learned all sorts of “lady” skills that would prepare me to be a decent woman and successful housewife. I make applesauce. I spin yarn. I can knit and crochet. I paint, sing, and play the harp. I can make quilts and clothes, and serve afternoon tea.

The problem is, activities such as those are no longer as popular as they used to be. Spin yarn? Many people don’t even understand what a drop spindle is, or they have never seen a harp up close.

Felicity Merriman and Elsie Dinsmore were my childhood friends, but I have learned that girls like them remain alive only on the words of a page. While girls my age learned about makeup and name brand clothing, I was out riding horses. While so-and-so was dating her first boyfriend, I was wondering if it was morally okay to wax my eyebrows (would it be vain?). By the time I reached young adulthood, I thought I was well on my way to becoming an accomplished gentlewoman (I use the term loosely). You can imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered that a proper gentlewoman is not esteemed in the same way she would have been a century ago.

These days it appears that society values a woman who is career driven more than housewife driven. Many women today are being awarded for accomplishments that, a century or two ago, only men would have attempted. Maybe that’s not a bad thing. Maybe it means we’ve allowed women to go above and beyond the original expectations of their gender. I think, however, that there is something to be said about a woman who can manage her home well, career or no career. There is a certain beauty that is lost when the art of housekeeping is thrown to the wayside in pursuit of what used to be left to the men.

That’s not to say that pursuing a career is a bad thing. I myself am studying to get a bachelor’s degree, after which I would like to manage a flock of goats (maybe), grow an herb garden, and possibly build my own house. Yes, with my own hands.

Do you remember the term “calling” before it was used in reference to the telephone? In the Victorian era, ladies would pay visits to, or call on, each other. In higher society, women would keep track of who called on them and to whom they owed calls. Paying a call could be compared to paying bills, they were so important. Today? “We should hang out sometime.”

Sometimes I wonder what the hell men are looking for if not a housewife. I may be late in saying this (by about 100 years), but it seems that the woman is having to find a new identity, since it is no longer defined by the skills she acquires for running a home. In a way, this is freeing, because it gives her more independence to choose her own path. In another way, however, it leaves people like me a bit confused about what to do when I’ve spent a significant chunk of my life training to be useful to a man.

Please do not take this as a self-pity rant (although that’s exactly what it is, so forgive me). This is not to say that I cannot survive without a man taking care of me, because I have complete confidence that I can. I think more importantly, I am trying to find my place in 2014 when I feel like I should have been born in 1880.

Things I Love: Sunday Afternoons

Sunday afternoon, the end of one week, beginning of another. Sometimes I don’t like it because it means that tomorrow is Monday. But it’s not so bad when I’m able to take just a little time to relax.

One recent Sunday afternoon, I spun yarn while listening to Norah Jones and drinking green tea. I’ve had a lot on my mind lately; there’s a lot going on, but spinning and listening to music helps to clear my mind.

Yeah, I’m still thinking about things I need to get done, and things I want to get done, but stepping back and taking some quiet time really helps me to feel better.

Maybe you’re busy, but don’t forget to take time to do something you enjoy, something that relaxes you. It will help you be more productive in the long run.

Yay Sheep!

Sheep are my time machines. The sight of them transports me back to my childhood when I learned the traditions of generations past through one activity: spinning wool.

My first harp teacher taught me how to spin wool on a small device called a drop spindle. It’s not as big or as complicated as the spinning wheel, something which I tried to use but could never get the hang of. By spinning the drop spindle, I learned how to twist sheep’s wool into lumpy yarn. Ideally the yarn is supposed to be smooth, but the lumps added character as it displayed the lack of skill of the little child’s hands who made it.

(image from seedpodcraft.com)

I can remember feeling the rough, greasy fibers gliding through my fingers and interlocking with each other as they formed one coherent string. I was so proud when I had spun an entire ball of yarn, although what became of that ball I’m not sure. I think I gave it as a gift to one of my parents.

I don’t know why I loved spinning so much. Maybe it was the smell of earth that appealed to me when I buried my nose in the white fluff, or the rough warmth I felt when it touched my skin. Maybe it was the novelty of creating something useful all by myself. Thinking now about spinning brings to mind memories of visiting sheep festivals, seeing a lamb being born at a friend’s farm, watching my harp teacher create a strand of yarn so effortlessly with her expert fingers.

I still have the drop spindle somewhere, sitting in a forgotten corner of the house, probably some wool with it. Someday I am going to get out that drop spindle and begin spinning again. Maybe I’ll use the lumpy yarn I spin to knit a scarf. Maybe I won’t make anything. But it was something I used to enjoy.