A spinning wheel was donated to work recently, but it wasn’t needed as part of the collections, so it made its way along to me. As Learning Assistant, it’s now my job to learn how to use the wheel, so that I can eventually demonstrate and teach it to other people. Gosh, it’s a hard life sometimes, isn’t it?!
The wheel was dropped off to the museum while I wasn’t there – I came in to find the wheel itself, and a bucket of bits. The bucket contained the flyer, a couple of bobbins, the drive cord (broken), a niddy-noddy, and a knob that I haven’t discovered the function of yet. If anyone can tell from the photo above where there isn’t a knob and there ought to be a knob, please let me know!
The piece of leather attaching the pedal to the drive shaft had split, so Fred (the Conservator) very kindly replaced it with a whole new piece for me. Once that was done, and I’d tied a knot in the drive cord, I could start to spin! I practiced just treadling for a bit, until I could do it without the wheel swinging backwards all the time. I came to add my own fibre to the yarn that was already wound around the bobbin, and discovered that I didn’t have an orifice hook – hence the straightened paper clip above!
I’d thought my first attempt at spinning was going rather badly, until I took my first metre and a half of yarn off the bobbin and plied it back on itself. Obviously it’s extremely uneven and wonky, but it’s got twist in it, and I’ve made yarn! Admittedly it took several attempts to get this far, lots of wondering why the yarn wasn’t winding around the bobbin, and adjusting the tension, and wondering whether it was too tightly spun, and losing control of the wheel with my feet while I was trying to draft with my hands.
I’ve emailed the local Spinners, Weaver & Dyers to ask for a bit of help, so hopefully I should be on my way to learning to spin really soon!