A tale of two skiens

I model for the life drawing class at the local community college. The students are starting to get bored drawing nude bodies about this time of the semester, so the teachers try to change things up a bit to hold their interest. This last Wednesday the teacher had me bring a costume and my spinning wheel, and we took the class outside under the trees. It was a beautiful day for it! I did some warm up 2 minute gesture poses, and then the teacher had me sit and actually spin yarn for the rest of the class time. Spinning involves small, repetitive motions, so it wasn't too hard for the students to draw the action. And I got to fill a bobbin full of white wool singles over the course of the afternoon.

I actually have several spinning wheels. The one I use for the drawing classes is my Ashford Traditional, because it looks the most like what people think a spinning wheel ought to look like. However, it is also the wheel that I lend to my daughter most of the time. We only have a few bobbins for it, so I figured I had better open this one back up before too long. So today I took the wheel back out with me to my local SCA (Medieval historical recreation) practice. I had a second lovely sunny afternoon to sit and spin, and filled up a second bobbin full of singles.

This evening I took both bobbins full of singles and put them on this Lazy Kate. Now, I don't know who Kate was, and why she was considered lazy, but this device to hold bobbins of yarn while you ply them together is a really useful little gadget!

To ply yarn, I feed the two singles from the bobbins back into the spinning wheel, this time turning the wheel in the opposite direction from my original spinning direction. When the two singles twist back on themselves it strengthens the resulting yarn, and if you do it right it makes a balanced yarn that won't kink up or untwist itself, or bias your stitches. That makes the yarn much nicer for knitting or crochet.

When I had a bobbin full of finished yarn I wound it off into a skein, using my weasel. I think it is technically called a clock reel, but when I was growing up my folks volunteered at a restored colonial farm house on the weekends. They had one of these, and the other volunteers called it a weasel. They said it was the basis for the nursery rhyme, "Pop goes the weasel', because after 40 turns around (or 100 yards) the device would make a clicking or popping sound. (The monkey in the rhyme would have been the child pestering the mother as she was working.) I've since been told this isn't true, but I love the story anyway.

All told, I got two beautiful skeins of two ply wool yarn, for a total of 262 yards. I'm going to have these with me on my table this weekend when I set up at Henny & Ev for their craft show on Friday and Saturday night. (http://www.hennyandevboutique.com/) If they don't find a home though, I'll hold on to them for the next time we've got a dye pot going. I like having a stash of hand spun white wool for playing in the colors.

"Pop!" Goes the Weasel

"All around the mulberry bush,
the monkey chased the weasel.
The monkey thought 'twas all in fun...
POP! goes the weasel."


When I was a kid, my folks volunteered at a restored colonial farmhouse in New Jersey, called the Miller-Cory place. We would go there on Sundays after church, dressed in our costumes. Us kids would basically run around the place, adding color. The adults did demonstrations, and other boring adult things. Some of the adult talks sunk in, though. I remember them talking about the 'weasel', which counted yarn. 40 times turning around, and the weasel would make a popping noise to let you know you had a full skein. I, at the time, was the little monkey that was getting in to everything. :)

Years later, and I am what passes for an adult. I've done the research, and what I knew as a weasel is technically known as a clock reel and may or may not actually be the source of the nursery rhyme. But it is a very useful piece of equipment, none the less! I was thrilled when I found my own weasel a month or so ago, in a second hand store. The poor old lady had been totally gutted, and had plastic daisies coming out of her. Can you believe that?! Screws had been added, so the arms didn't turn any more. She was marketed as a planter, for $27 dollars. Poor thing!!

Well! I rescued her, ripped out the planter and removed the offending screws, then poked and prodded and oiled until the arms spun correctly again. The clock innards are still missing, so unfortunately she doesn't POP any more. But each time yarn winds around the arms is exactly 2 1/2 yards. When I wind my yarn off of my spinning wheel into a skein, I simply count how many times around we go, multiply by 2.5, and I have the yardage in the skein.

I think my old lady weasel is quite happy to be back at her original task. Sometimes, I almost hear a the tune of a certain nursery rhyme, floating through the air...