The Wool Merchant's Daughter

I couldn’t be happier. I found someone local who can lathe me some missing spinning wheel parts. I took him a boxful to copy and looky what I got in return!

Lots of good stuff in here, like the replacement maiden for the DesJardins wheel that has been on my workbench this past year:

A handful of extra axle retaining pins:

The dark one just above the original is black walnut.

There is a CPW decorative tensioning knob to replace one that suffered from “dog chew” and a replacement back support:

And, best of all, spokes. CPW spokes. Lots and lots of 3-bead CPW spokes:

Seems like 9 out of 10 of these rascally CPWs I rescue have either a cracked or missing spoke.

Everything came workshop fresh with their little lathe mounts intact, ready to be clipped and fitted. The strangest things make a girl happy!

If you, too, are looking for replacement parts, check out New Jersey-based wood turner, Lee Alexander, who can be contact through his Web site: Dreamweaver Designs.

Our regular readers may recall that last summer, my husband and I put together a travelling exhibit of our antique spinning wheel collection and took it to the Holmes-Hendrickson House in Holmdel, NJ. This year, we are thrilled that the New Jersey State History Fair, “The Spirit of the Jerseys,” has invited us to bring the exhibit to that event.

On Saturday, May 12, from 11 AM through 5 PM, “Every Revolution of the Wheel” will be on display at the New Jersey State History Fair in Washington’s Crossing Park, Titusville, NJ. This is an interactive exhibit which allows visitors to spin on wheels suited to their level of experience, in addition to viewing the older antique wheels from around the world.

We are hoping for good weather and lots of interested (and interesting!) visitors to chat with. Will you be one of them?

Having been a long-time fan of Rappard’s Little Peggy spinning wheel, when the chance to acquire a Rappard Mitzi came along, I jumped at it. She arrived safely via FedEx and was assembled on my front steps, much to the amusement of the neighbors who are now used to the parade of spinning wheels in and out.

Mitzi is a reproduction Norwegian straight bench wheel:

Her flyer is identical to the Little Peggy, and her maidens are the same as the Little Peggy’s front maiden:

Here she is, reunited with a long-lost little sister, Little Peggy:

And, can Mitzi spin!

She has the same nicely-balanced wheels as the Little Peggy; not quite as heavy, but a lovely smooth motion. I was able to draw out very fine singles. This is some generic wool roving purchased at Woolbearers in Mount Holly, NJ. It proved to be very nice fiber and resulted in two bobbins full, which were then plied on the Little Peggy.

The resulting skeins were refreshingly colorful on a warm sunny spring morning.

And, I had an audience in this nice sunny weather with the windows open for the first time:

This is a brief video of Daphne, my double-treadle Canadian Production Wheel. This was shot a couple of weeks ago when it was 65 degrees and sunny. What a difference from today’s snow and slush!

For the first post of the New Year, we have one of the first new wheels of the New Year. This was a complete surprise. I had gone to Pennsylvania to pick up a Canadian Production Wheel, and the antique store had this lovely tucked away in a corner.

This great wheel has a lot to recommend it, but most of all its size.

Here she is next to the Vezina CPW I was picking up. Her drive wheel is 31 and 1/2 inches in diameter, similar to some other CPWs I’ve had. The Vezina has a 27″ wheel.

This little great wheel was missing a few bits, her maidens and spindle, but I believe I can find replacements among my box of spare parts. She really has some lovely turnings, which is unusual in a great wheel, and I love her tensioning device with the diamond-shaped nut!

She has shapely legs:

A very curvacious upright post with an extra wide drive wheel:

Not sure if this is the maker’s mark or if she is marked with her former owner’s initials:

She is a sturdy wheel with some minimal insect damage to the under-the-table end of her upright post. Pennington & Taylor lists two similar wheels as a child’s wool wheel and both examples come from the same region in Pennsylvania as where this was found. Additionally, some full size wheels from the region have similar turnings and bandings so I’m guessing she did not stray far from her place of origin.

One of our recent adventures took us fairly close to Mount Holly, New Jersey, and you know what that means …

A visit to the LYS, Woolbearers!

I’m not entirely sure of the shop’s square footage, probably over 1,200 sq. ft.? But I do know it is completely packed with all kinds of fibery goodness. There are cubbies of yarn ….

And walls of yarn …

And racks of yarn …

John is no doubt wondering how much of this will come with us this time! The yarn selection really is fabulous, ranging from old standbys like Cascade 220 to the higher end Rowan and Madeline Tosh, to name but a few. In between, you can find a huge range of sock yarns, lovely mohairs, yarns for baby items, and just about whatever you can think of. They have recently added the Jameson’s Shetland wools, Spindrift and DK, which is a welcome addition because I can never find these and usually have to mail order.

Woolbearer’s also has a selection of handspinning supplies:

They are dealers for several modern brands of wheel, but I was interested to see this little wheel on the floor:

This is a Daneker, oft maligned by handspinners as being a bad attempt at reproducing a Colonial saxony wheel. Made by the Daneker Furniture Company in Maryland during the 1960s, this wheel was an effort to accurately reproduce a working model of a flax wheel. Unfortunately, the makers do not seem to have consulted any handspinners and so did make some errors. Like use brass for the flyer shaft, bobbin screw inset, and even the wheel axle. The brass does not wear well and so these parts tend to show the stress they are subjected to. The screw tensioning knob is also problematic, in that it is not long enough. However, construction flaws taken into consideration, the Danekers DO spin, and spin well, as evidenced by the bobbin of yarn on this one:

This flyer appears to be a replacement, as the orifice is larger than the typical Daneker. These wheels make nice beginner double-drive wheels. They are strong and the drive wheel well balanced. They often show up on Craigslist or Ebay and, while I wouldn’t pay more than $100 for one, they could be an excellent alternative for the new spinner on a budget.

It was difficult, but I managed to make my selections. Of course, every time I felt I had it pinned down, I’d take another look and see something else I hadn’t looked at more closely.

Finally I headed for the checkout, where Woolbearer’s owner, Myra, was hard at work. Myra does not like to have her picture taken, she said, but graciously pretended I was not there so I could get a shot of her in action. Of course, it was the best way to show the stock of needles and notions on the wall behind her.

As we were leaving, I got an arty little shot of this lace shawl in the window, looking out at a wall mural across the street.

Mount Holly, the county seat of Burlington County, is really a lovely little Colonial town with many restored buildings. They have worked hard over the past few years to build up the community and the shopping district. In addition to Woolbearers, there are several very nice restaurants in the area, along with the shops at the Mill Race Village section of town. It is always worth a visit, so if you are in the area, I would recommend you drop on by!

Thanksgiving Day was lovely here; lots of blue skies after days of rain and unseasonably warm temperatures. A perfect day to visit the beach and do some knitting project photography!

This is the Fishbone Lace cowl from Sheryl Thies’s book, Ocean Breezes.

Knitted from a skein of my corriedale handspun in a colorway called, appropriately, Briny Blue Sea. There was only around 190 yards in the skein and I had been looking for a smallish project to use it in. This was perfect. It is an easy lace project, knit on size 8 needles. As long as you can work a yarn-over and pass a slipped stitch over, you can make this cowl.

The problem was in photographing it. It is very difficult to properly photograph a small, flat object. After draping it over the dune grass, we tried it on driftwood: 

We draped it over the jetty rocks:

I thought the seafoamed performed particularly well in this photo!

We draped it over a different piece of driftwood:

Finally, we draped it over me:

This gives you a little of the effect of the inside stitches against the outside, as it is folded over like a loose turtleneck.

Finally, when we were wrapping up, I couldn’t resist get a shot with the foam of the waves. Of course, I had to wash the doggoned thing all over to get the sand off it, but loved the way the shot turned out!

The Wool Merchant’s Daughter also has a Ravelry forum! If you are on Ravelry, please join our forum.

My Ravelry handle is “JerseyLightning” and I typically am hanging out on the Antique Spinning Wheel forum. I started a forum for The Wool Merchant’s Daughter in order to house any spinning wheel videos and pictures of individual wheels. And, of course, if anyone wants to start a discussion there, we’d love to have you!

If anyone is looking to sell an antique or vintage spinning wheel, please feel free to contact me.

I am always buying. Send a description of the wheel with the price. I am not looking for Great Wheels, unless there is something particularly unusual about them. I’d prefer wheels with treadles. Please feel free to contact me!

I did some knitting:

You know … knitting. The thing you do with the pointy sticks? When not playing with spinning wheels?

It had been so long since I actually finished a project, I was afraid I’d forgotten what to do. No need to worry — it is all like riding a bicycle and it came back to me.

I didn’t even use a pattern. I just had a vision for a pair of men’s fingerless gloves with a simple cable twist up the back, but the cable came undone and became the fingers. The center cable does this; the ones on either side — its their outer side cuves that forms the fingers. This is knit from the wool walnut-dyed at the Primitive Technologies weekend. We went from this:

To this:

To this:

To this:

To this:

To this:

I love it when a plan comes together!