Spinning Day in Phillipston, MA

This Morning I brought my drum carder downstairs to load into the car. I also loaded my spinning bag (which contained my drop spindle and carded batt). I also brought along a couple of books on spinning, as well as a drop spindle. This was brought just in case the lady I was going to teach how to spin would like to learn how to use a drop spindle as well.

Lauren (the lady who's house I was going to), had mentioned coming around 11:00 am. So I didn't have to load up the car until around 10:00 am, and I knew that wouldn't take long to do either. In the meantime I went around the house straightening up hear and there. Then at 10:00 I loaded up the car, backed it out to warm up and then went back into the house to put the dogs into their kennels. I then grabed my hat, coat, purse and cell phone and headed out to the car. Once in the car I realized I'd forgotten the directions on the counter so had to get back out of the car and go back into the house to get them off the kitchen counter. Okay I now had my head on straight. LOL

Then I got back into the car closed the garage door and backed out of the driveway and headed out to route 202. Route 202 took me into Baldwinville MA and Templeton MA from there I had to follow the direction to get to Lauren's farm "Sugar Hollow Farm". The directions were pretty direct and I didn't have any trouble findin her house. Once there I parked my car and grabed my drum carder and spinning bag.

Once in Lauren's house, we set up the drum carder on the table (in the kitchen) and brought her spinning wheel in there as well. She then went out to her barn to get a bucket of fleece that we were going to card on the drum carder. When she came back in with the bucket of fleece, we went to work looking at her spinning wheel. Lauren has been having trouble trying to get the wool to draw in through the mother-of-all and wind onto the bobbin.

It took me a little while, but I think I found the main problem. There's a con rod joint missing, that helps connect the peddle to the wheel, to make the wheel turn. Lauren told me that it broke and someone mentioned to her about putting a leather joint there. Well, her leather joint was too long and there for the peddle would only alow the wheel to make a half turn. If you really wanted to spin you could just turn the wheel with one hand but you'd not get a lot of spinning done. Anyway's I remembered having a maintenance kit at my house that still had everything in it to fix her spinning wheel. I told her I'd bring it with me the next time I came.

So we started carding up some of her wool before we had lunch. Lauren had prepared some homemade Chicken noodle soup with some homemade bread. Mmmmmmmmmmmm, this was very delicious! After lunch I showed the my drop spindle and carded batt of Irish Spring Delight I was spinning up. She was really interested in learn how to use a drop spindle so I pulled out the one I brought to teach her on if she so desired. She learned pretty fast too! She liked the drop spinning so much that she bought the drop spindle from me, so's she could continue her spinning.

We've already set up another spinning day for next Monday morning. Hopefully the maintenance kit that I found in my spinning room will fix her spinning wheel so's she can learn how to spin on that as well. I will do my best to fix it and teach her how to spin on it.