History in a Spin
My forays into the world of wool and spinning in general are coming on hugely and I am having a whale of a time processing the wool from literally just off the sheep's back right up to the finished knitted article. Still getting a bit of inconsistency there but improving. Its a time consuming business and when friends of ours mentioned that they had seen spinning wheels in a local Antique (junk) shop I was intrigued enough to take time out to go for a look. Of course I didn't come home empty handed. There were three or four wheels... one was just a jumble of bits on the floor - along with three or four distaffs complete with flax attached. My heart started racing, just a bit. I had already been told by an elderly Spanish acquaintance that they used to grow flax here in Extremadura, but not any more. It sort of explained why there was no real tradition of wool gathering. The annual sheep shearing is more about getting the wool off the animal and less about the q