You Spin Me Right Round, Baby, Right Round

So I finally got to enjoy the spinning class I missed last month.

I came home with my own drop spindle. I had pictured something quite fancy, like the ones at Shall We Knit, but the spindles we used were more serviceable ones, made by Ashley's father. They were ours to take home, as was the fleece roving that Ashley had dyed and provided us for the class.



I like darker, more intense colours, but the braids of fleece that Ashley dyed were mostly medium shades, some greens and lilacs and even a pinkish orange. I saw one fleece at the top of the pile that appealed to me right away. It was the darkest one there. Luckily, no one in the group shared my particular desire for that colourway, so I was able to pick it up after they all started evaluating which specific nuances of green and blue they preferred out of the four or five similarly dyed fleeces in those colours.



The woman I sat next to had an interesting background, growing up with a mother who was very much into the textile arts, including spinning, weaving, and even natural dyeing. But I didn't really know how interesting she was until she got up at the end of the class and put on her hairy purple coat.

Yes, it was hairy (more like mohair than muppet fur).

And it was purple.

And this woman had given it a happy home. Which is good -- because certainly not all hairy purple coats can say the same!

Another woman, who was there with her daughter, looked somewhat familiar but I really couldn't place her until she started talking about Westfield Heritage Village, where she volunteers as one of the people living in an 1825 house. Apparently, there was nothing much of interest going on in this area in 1825. The War of 1812 was long over, and the rebellions wouldn't start until the late 1830s. Also, apparently, there were no spinning wheels in Canada in the 1820s, so the woman and her daughter were learning how to spin with drop spindles so they could be authentic.

Westfield Heritage Village is a place we visit often, usually in early spring for their Maple Syrup days, which include a pancake breakfast every Sunday in the month of March. Lovely! But we also watch the demos, too, showing the way native peoples prepared maple sugar at the time of French contact:



as well as how it would have been done in the 1800s in small settlements around Ontario and Quebec:



But back to the spinning. One of the best "beginner" tips I picked up in the class was this:



Ashley had us all put little arrows on our spindles so we would remember which direction to keep spinning. I didn't think I would need it, but actually it came in handy more than once.

And now I am ready to remove this yarn from the spindle and keep spinning. I love the way this turned out, and I don't want to ply it, but we are learning plying next week. I will make a small amount of a very thin single so I can ply it with a small amount of this stuff for learning purposes.

But not today. Today we have to shop for a microwave oven, because ours died last night.

Just because I want to spin like it's 1825, doesn't mean I want to cook like it -- so I need a replacement, pronto!