Happy Anniversary - Victorian Technology Institute Turns One

     The VTI this past July

     It seems hard to believe that I started this blog a year ago.  It was just a few days after Halloween, and I was nursing a broken right wrist (see "A Skull, a Spectre, and a Snap" for that story).  I typed the first blog entry using my left hand and right index finger, figuring out how to use Blogger as I went.  It took nine hours.  I've cut that time by half, but it's still a slog, mostly because of how Blogger works (or doesn't work) with images.  But it's been worth it.

     It's been a busy October.   Harvest and I travelled to Kidron, Ohio, to go to Lehman's: a huge store that carries almost everything a low-technology person could want.  I've been making purchases from them for years, first via their paper catalog and now though their online store, but it's worth making the drive and going to the store to shop.  I had been lusting after an Alladin oil lamp for years - it gives much better light than a standard oil lamp - and Lehman's had a large selection of them.  It was high time to get one.

 

     Our trip to Central Ohio took us by some interesting roadside oddities.  Wisconsin may have its giant chainsaw-carved logger statutes and enormous mice with cheese, but Central Ohio's oddities have a regional flavor all their own.

                         If the Trojan horse relocated to Central Ohio, it would look like this.

A team of four "draft" horses made out of straw pulling a vegetable cart.  Their eyes are small squash, and their ears are corn cobs. 

  Rather than staying at one of the tourist hotels in the Amish community area, we opted for a B&B at Buckeye Ridge Farm in Wooster, Ohio, about 20 minutes away. We had a little cottage all to ourselves.  The farm owners, Lynn and Steve, raise Spanish cashmere goats and buckeye chickens which suited me right down to the ground.  We had great walks in the woods with Bear who loved crunching along in the leaves.  The goats were quite personable, and of course, the relative merits of various chicken breeds were discussed.  I helped Lynn evaluate some of her cashmere, which, of course, meant I had to have some of my own, and I came home with a small bag of the precious stuff which will be blended with some super-soft wool to make a luxurious yarn.  

        

This handsome fellow is either Fabio or Antonio Banderas.  He's gorgeous, but since it's breeding season, he smells absolutely dreadful.  

Kidron is smack in the heart of the Ohio Amish community, which is handy for a store  like Lehmans that sells low-technology goods.  The settlement, as it's called by the Amish, spreads over several towns and counties.   The Amish are well-known for their skill in woodworking and furniture, but there are any number of other craftspeople and small specialty shops scattered among or within the farms, their skills or wares only visible through small signs located at the end of long driveways.  Because we enjoy finding beautiful handmade items and keeping away from the crowds, particularly this year, we found ourselves following these little signs up hills and down dales to find the farms in question.  

     GPS will do you no good whatever here:  you need to navigate by knowing where the particular road is that you might have seen yesterday which is by that school near the fence that runs along the side of this barn and up and over the hill on the left.  I'm not joking.  Our Amish area in Cashton is quite navigable, but this area is vast.  Add to that the Amish farm aesthetic:  white house, dark green curtains, white or red barn, and navigation becomes even more interesting.

   In Wisconsin, the Amish specialize in greenhouses full of plants and flowers, wooden items, rugs, and maple syrup in addition to the numerous furniture shops they are famous for.  In Ohio, it's hand-woven baskets.  We managed to find a beautiful dog bed basket made by a young man who, at his father's request, signed the bottom of the basket for us while we chatted with his father.  Bear enjoys it enormously.  

   

   I won't claim to be any kind of expert in Amish life and culture, but I can say that it appears that many of the Amish groups in this area of Ohio are far more "liberal" than here in Wisconsin.  Tractors seem to be allowed if they are pulling something down a road but are not in a field.  Given the hilly nature of the terrain, e-bikes are a real thing here, as it avoids hitching up the buggy to go to town for just a few necessaries.  I'm sure that many people were grateful when it was determined that they were acceptable.  The bikes are usually black, sometimes white, and all have the same dark gray panniers on the back.

The little bike trailers that are made for towing children behind a bike, however, can be any color at all.  They are used for carrying all kinds of things that the rest of us would put in the trunk of our car.  And with all those bright colors, they are highly visible, which makes for safety when cars are whizzing by.  

     Our arrival was at a particularly opportune time, as the Mid-Ohio Draft Horse and Carriage Sale was taking place that week in Mount Hope.  Amish people come from all over to purchase horses, buggies, and tack.  This makes for interesting traffic jams at stop signs where cars, buggies, and tour buses compete to get through an intersection.  The auction itself is spread out over three days:  draft horses on one day, horses and ponies for carriage and buggy driving the next day, and the buggies themselves on the third day.  By chance we happened upon the "used car lot" of the buggies that were going to be up for auction.  There were at least forty of them.

         Knowing that it was likely that would buy almost everything I saw at Lehman's, I had set myself a generous, but not to be exceeded, spending limit.  I'm happy to report that I came in under budget.  Just.  We did come home with that lamp I had been waiting for, a pair of new butter paddles, several other kitchen items including a dough whisk that's become one of Harvest's favorite baking tools, and a wooden food dehydrator that can work in a conventional oven, in the oven of the wood cookstove,  or on top of the soapstone stove in the parlor.  I've been making good use of it drying apples on top of the parlor stove where I can use the gentle radiant heat to good effect.

    Once home, it was time to finish rehearsing "Twisted Tales of Poe," a radio play I was performing with Evansville Community Theater.  A radio play is done as if it was one of the old radio broadcasts from the 1940s and 1950s, with actors moving back and forth from their seats to the microphones to play their characters.  These broadcasts often included a live audience.  Naturally, we had commercials as well, as the old programs would have had, including our very own Ward Hurtley Funeral Home - perfect for Halloween.  I was cast as Montressor from The Cask of Amontillado, and I had a great time portraying that vengeful villain.  Of our three nights of performance, on October 28, 29, and 30, two were sell-outs.  

  

                                           The cast of "Twisted Tales of Poe" in our 1940s costumes.

    

      One of Poe's best known tales, The Cask of Amontillado was published in Godey's Lady's Book in 1846.  This magazine was part Vogue and part Good Housekeeping.  I imagine it caused quite a stir when it was published and read by Victorian ladies.  Amateur theatricals were all the rage in the Victorian era, and there's no reason not to imagine that, at the very least, Poe's tales would be have been read to chilling effect in a darkened room with thunder and rain outside and rapt listeners sitting by a fire inside hanging on every word.  

     In keeping with the Poe theme, I bought two bottles of Merlot and made wine labels for each of them which read:

  E.A. Poe    

Amontillado     

 Montressor Winery, Italy

    1846

 

and gave them to our director.  The labels were so well done that at first, some of the cast members thought I'd actually found a wine called Amontillado! 

         A Victorian etching of The Raven

    Which brings us around again to Halloween 2021.  The painted sugar skull from last year came back out and was placed at the bottom of the stairs and filled with springy frog toys, and the lanterns, with real candles, were lit as always to enhance the ambience.  We have been known as the Witch House for several years now, to the extent that if someone in town asks where our house is, and we tell them, "It's the Witch House," the questioner will often respond, "Oh, yes.  I know exactly where it is."  It doesn't have to be Halloween for the house to be recognized as such.  We are the Witch house in May and June just as much as in October, and we have a reputation to maintain.   Unlike last year, this time we were able to enjoy the arrival of the trick-or-treaters. Though there were certainly not as many as in 2019, we expect it to pick right up to the usual 600 (I do not exaggerate) next year.  Of course, parents dressed up as well, and there were a good number of costumed dogs.  This year, the Cowardly Lion from The Wizard of Oz seemed to be the most popular canine attire.   

     Harvest cackled for two solid hours, amusing adults and older kids while giving the youngest just a moment of pause.  She only does this at Halloween.  One of the directors from the play sat with us on the porch drinking mulled wine and enjoying the show.  This was far preferable to driving to the hospital with a broken wrist.

                                                Harvest waiting on the porch for the first trick-or-treaters

   

     I even got a photo of the Mysterious Lady again this year.  She was the most elegant witch I've ever seen, with full Day of the Dead makeup, a silver wig, a stunning purple velvet hat and a matching cape that went all the way over the horse's rump.  I have no idea where she gets her clothes, but I sure would like to find out.  As usual, she made only two passes down the street, and I had to run to catch up with her on the second pass.  She was kind enough to stop for me to take a photo.  I still have no idea who she is or how she arrives in town.  She simply appears and disappears like the ghost she may be.

     

     And so, the Victorian Technology Institute begins another year with new adventures to be had and new skills to learn and share.  Happy birthday to VTI, and Happy Halloween to all our readers!  

 

Sheep! - The Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival

 

Lily and Snuggles

These are my people,  This is my tribe.

    At last, after a two year wait, The Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival was able to resume this year.  This event is the highlight of my year.  This post will give you a tiny window into this event where I am able to fully be the person that almost nobody sees - the person who is a spinner, a wool judge, a teacher, and a member of a unique community that meets once a year for a weekend in which we share our collective addiction to all things fiber and sheepish.  

    I've had a long-standing interest in European pre-industrial life skills, particularly in what the common people ate and, in particular, how they clothed themselves before modern, industrial cloth production.  The seed of this interest was planted by my high school English and European History teacher, and I blame him for my nearly life-long obsession with fiber.  What I wanted to know - what I still want to know - is how people made decent, sometimes luxurious, clothing for themselves without the use of machinery.  

    In order to begin to find the answer to my question, I had to learn how to spin wool.  I was in my mid-twenties when I started to learn from a woman named Hope Parschell who lived in the California desert.  Hope cooked on a wood cookstove and had bags of wool tucked everywhere throughout her house.  Her entire existence was magical, and I wanted some of that magic for myself.  And that's where it began.

    Over the years, I've learned how to spin well, and I've won my share of First Place and Best of Show ribbons.  It was a natural progression, therefore, that eventually I should learn about shearing sheep, what to do with a fleece once it's off the sheep, and how to prepare the fiber to make it possible to spin it into yarn.  And somewhere along the way, I had to have a small, spinner's flock of my own sheep, because that's just what one does, you know.  While I was shearing sheep and processing fleeces and talking to fiber folks, I learned about the different breeds of sheep that produce wool and what makes a good fleece or a poor one.

    Which brings us to my arrival in Wisconsin on Labor Day 2004, spinning wheels in tow.  Only a week after my arrival, a friend of mine took me to the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival.  I do not exaggerate when I say that it was a life-changing event.  There were sheep everywhere, and people who knew about sheep and wool, and people who were spinners, and people who were weavers and knitters, and people who knew all kinds of things, and people who loved these people who loved sheep and wool.  This was a complete departure from my experience in California.  There, people's eyes would glaze over rapidly or they would listen with a baffled expression when I began to wax lyrical over sheep and wool.  Suddenly, here in Wisconsin, I was no longer an oddball.  These were my people.  I had found my tribe at last.

    In February of the following year, I was part of a shearing team at a local farm.  My mentor, Mary Wallace, and I skirted* 130 fleeces that day standing on a hard-packed dirt floor in an unheated barn while the freezing wind raged just a few feet away outside.  I came very close to frostbite that day, but I was introduced to the people who would become my fiber family.  They asked if I would like to volunteer to help at the fleece show at The Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival that September, and being under the influence of endorphins caused by freezing feet, I agreed.  It was one of the best decisions I have ever made.

    That September, I arrived at the festival grounds and met Mary at the barn that held the fleece show.  There were rows and rows and rows of fleeces in bags stretching halfway down the barn.  I had never seen anything like it.  It was dizzying.  It may sound odd, but to sheep people, the smell of a barn full of fleece is incredibly comforting.  And before you sneer, sheep don't smell bad like goats.  They smell, well, warm.

  

Tables of fleeces stretching down the length of the fleece show barn.  Each bag contains a fleece from one sheep.  

    

 

     I can no longer remember exactly what I did that day, but I was hooked.  Over the next few years, I learned to judge fleeces and eventually became the Coordinator of the fleece show, a teacher, and a fleece judge in my own right.  The fleece barn is my home and my domain for three full days.  I love it.

The late Neal Ketner, who taught me how to judge fleeces and was an all around wonderful person

      But the fleece show is only part of the festival.  There are two barns full of vendors selling every imaginable sheep or fiber-related product, including delicious sheep cheese and soap made with sheep milk.  I often find myself a little breathless after touring the vendor barns - there's just so much to see and touch and eat and talk about.  Since I am instantly recognizable in my Victorian wear, friends and folks who have seen me judge fleeces or teach will stop to have a chat, and we catch up on news.  

    The festival offers classes on all kinds of subjects that involve fiber: spinning, knitting, weaving, dyeing, felting, and basket making.  While basket making isn't technically working with fiber, the students create a basket for storing wool, so I suppose that's the connection, plus it's wildly popular.

                                                   Yarn made from a rainbow of fibers by one of the students in my class     

    There is a fashion show and there are demonstrations of all kinds, including, of course, sheep shearing.  And there are competitions of all kinds including our own fleece show.

  Best in Show Winner, Jolyn Meehan, with fleece show judge Letty Klein.  Jolyn won Best in Show out of a field of 160 fleeces!

 There are, of course, competitions for sheep breeders.  These look exactly like dog shows, with all the primping and pampering one would expect, except the competitors say "baaaaah" instead of "woof".

      One of the events which attracts a large number of observers is the Sheep to Shawl competition.  This is basically an insane fiber relay race.  Adults who probably should be examined by psychiatric professionals are given a bunch of fleece and they have to prepare it, spin it, and weave it into a shawl in about four hours.  These people are serious competitors with uniforms that can be (ahem) rather unique.  They practice for months prior to the competition with each team member taking on a specific part of the process.  Kind of like baseball but with wool.  Sort of.  It's the closest a spinner and weaver can get to an athletic competition, and the victorious team will take a winning lap throughout the barns, shawl held high, to great acclaim.  

            Two teams of Sheep to Shawl Competitors from other fiber festivals.  Note the rather  unique uniform on the team below.

 
    

     When I need a break from working the fleece show, I try to take at least half an hour to watch the herding trials.  I could watch them for hours.  If you've seen the movie Babe, you may remember the dog named Fly.  Dogs like Fly - border collies - are the most brilliant dogs ever, and they need a job to do.  Each dog has to go out and fetch a bunch of irritable sheep and move them through a series of gates and pens at the shepherd's command (usually a series of whistles).  The dogs race, run, crouch, stalk, lie down, and move the sheep this way and that to get them where the shepherd wants them to go.  Sometimes the sheep have other ideas, though.  At the end of the day, win or lose, it's clear that the dogs love their people, and for them, it's a good day's work done.  

                                                           Tresa Laferty and Tele

        And, of course, there are sheep.  From early in the morning until long after the sun goes down, we are treated to a concert of "baaaahs", "maaaahs", "buuuurs", and "blaaaahs" from the sheep penned just outside the barn.  There is a Hall of Breeds where people can look at sheep on the hoof that they might never see. 

Dozing Soay sheep.  These are a primitive, semi-domesticated breed.  They seem quite relaxed, don't they?

 

Two Shetland sheep (left) and a Scottish Blackface (above).

A snuggle of Shropshire sheep.  They've been sheared recently, so they look a bit naked, but they don't seem to mind.

A Shropshire lamb looking for trouble.

Buddy, the big Cormo ram.  This guy was a love bug and wanted me to keep scratching his ears for hours.

  

    

                                A white Border Leicester with a Shropshire pen pal.

And what would a festival be without a party?  There are any number of dinners and get togethers in the evenings.  For some of us, it is the only time we will see each other until next year, so we make the most of it.  In the fleece barn, we have a constant supply of chocolate on hand.   My  crew thinks it's there to keep me happy, but the truth is they eat most of it.  On the other hand, the four of us who stay in the hotel together have wine and cheese to enjoy as well as other goodies we may have brought with us.  Most of the time, it's good wine.  This year, it was nearly undrinkable, but as exhaustion set in, it didn't really seem to matter.

    On Sunday afternoon, after the fleece sale ends and we have balanced the sales, we linger just a little bit longer together, doing an extra spot check of the barn, sweeping the floor yet again, anything for an excuse to stay a bit longer  The weather often changes during the course of the weekend, and on Friday when we all arrive, it may have been sunny and warm and feel like summer, but by the time we leave on Sunday, it may be much cooler.  

    The festival is a ritual of the season.  Fall is setting in.  The shepherds will be breeding their ewes for lambing in spring, but the long, cold winter still lies ahead.   We have fleeces to wash and yarn to spin, but the tribe is dispersing to their several homes, and we won't see each other for another year.  Hair will turn grayer.  Children will go off to college or get married.  Lambs will be born and bought and sold.  

    This  cycle of gathering with other sheep folk has repeated itself as long as people have been raising sheep - thousands of years.  I can sense the echoes of those gatherings of long ago when I talk with a shepherd about their flock or admire another spinner's yarn.  It feels timeless.  We have put our selves into this process, well beyond the reach of mass production of sheep and wool.  Technology will come and go, but the process of raising a sheep and hand spinning its wool into yarn has staying power.  We are in the process of rediscovering what was commonplace to our ancestors and nearly lost: how to feed and clothe ourselves well and comfortably from the animals we raise on our own farms or those nearby.  And I still don't know how they did it, but I'm going to keep trying.

*Skirting is the process of removing the undesirable parts of a fleece so that only the good wool remains.  It can be a messy, smelly job.

Flax to Linen the Low Technology Way

    It's been a busy time during the last month as high summer is drawing to a close.  Scott Johnson of the Low Technology Institute https://lowtechinstitute.org and I took some time away from working, building, and gardening to teach a three-part workshop on growing, processing, and spinning flax.  

    First, just a touch of history (I promise).  Flax is a plant fiber, unlike wool, and requires cultivation to produce useable fiber.  Flax has been used since ancient times to create beautiful, hand spun, handwoven linen fabrics that would seem almost impossible to recreate today.  Flax was, literally, worth its weight in gold in Egypt.  Linen mummy wrappings were made from flax, and, of course, the pharaohs wanted only the very best for their trip to the afterlife.  Those very revealing garments worn by women in the tomb paintings of those pharaohs - very fine, very sheer linen.   

    Flax was also grown throughout Europe and is known to have been used to produce cloth at least 3,000 years ago in England - way, way, way before the spinning wheel was even imagined.  And flax has crept into our English lexicon in all kinds of sneaky ways, as you will soon discover.

    Before cotton was available, linen was used for everything from sheets and towels to underclothing. And in case you're wondering: no, people didn't wear the same clothes every day all year round for years on end.  They may have only had one or two outer garments at a time, usually made from wool, but they changed their linens (their underwear made from linen) quite frequently to keep themselves as clean as possible.  You might only have two sets of outer clothes, but you had a bunch of linen unmentionables.   If you wonder why we have "linen sales" today, it's because sheets and pillowcases were also made of linen back then.  Unlike cotton, linen lasts.  It was common for linen items to be listed in a will.  Many people have been given their grandmother's linen tablecloths and napkins, and they never seem to wear out.

    There's a reason that fine linen fabrics are so expensive, though.  The process of converting flax plants into linen yarn to be woven into fabric is time-consuming and labor intensive in the extreme.  It takes a ridiculously long time to do it - so much so that one has to wonder who came up with the idea in the first place and why.  However, in a world where fossil fuels were minimal, such as the Victorian era,  flax and wool would have been two fibers that could be grown, harvested, and processed our local area.

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    Not just any old flax seed will work for fiber.  If you imagine that you're going to be able to go to the local co-op, scoop up a pound or two of seed, plant it, and have fiber to spin, you will be sorely disappointed.  There are two kinds of flax: the type for seeds and the type for fiber.  Almost all of the flax grown nowadays is the type for seeds only, and the plants are completely unusable for fiber.  The varieties that produce fiber are hard to come by and are often imported.  

    Scott has been growing a small plot of flax for about three years now, and the first half of our workshop series centered around growing and processing flax. On the first day of the workshop Scott took the participants through the planting and growing process, including instructions from The Book of the Farm published in 1842 by Henry Stephens. Spanning three volumes, 91 chapters, and 1384 pages, it was the farming bible of its day.

                                                              Toni harvesting flax                                           

    After learning the basics of planting and growing, everyone trooped off to the flax field to harvest the flax.  We spent a good while pulling the long, thin stalks out of the soil by hand.  Flax is harvested by pulling up the plants rather than cutting them down.  Thankfully that's easy to do on Scott's small plot, but it would be back breaking labor in a large field under a summer sun.

    The plants are then tied into bundles with more flax and laid out to dry in the sun.  I have to admit that my bundle tying skill was seriously wanting.  The bundles held together - barely.  I'm a good spinner but a lousy bundler.

Brian bundling flax like a pro.

  

                                                                                                                        Flax bundles along the fence line

                                                                The flax harvesting crew

Scott teaching his son, Felix, about the mysteries of flax.  Felix was quite interested in it.    

    After the flax dries out a bit, it's time to  ripple and ret it.  Rippling is done by passing the tops of the flax stalks through a giant comb which pops the seeds off the plants so they can be saved for next year's crop.  With the scarcity and expense of those European seeds, every seed saved from Scott's flax crop counts toward a larger plot each year.  

    Retting is just a fancy word for rotting.  If you have a nice, dewy lawn and about five weeks to spare, you can spread your flax out, flip it over every couple of days, and have lovely, silvery, "dew retted" flax.  The faster, but smellier, way is to submerge it in water for about 10 days until the outer part of the stalk begins to rot away  You know the smell of a lake in the middle of summer when the water level goes down and the lake weed starts to rot?  That's the smell.  It's fairly awful.  Scott retted a crop in his canoe, and I wonder if the smell ever came out.  It tends to linger.  (Correction:  Scott says this only takes five days in his experience.  He did not, however, minimize the extent of the smell.) 

    After retting, the flax is allowed to dry out again, which takes most of the evil smell away, and then it's time break it.  This sounds like some form of medieval torture, and if you look at a flax break, you might be inclined to agree.

                                                                    My antique flax break
    

    The useable fiber in a flax plant is inside the stalk, and breaking the stalks begins to release the outer layer and expose the fibers inside.  The idea is to hold a fist-sized bundle of stalks in one hand and then bash the heck out of it between the jaws of the break.  It's a lot like chopping cabbage with a wooden cleaver now that I think about it. If you're doing this on a windy day, keep the wind at your back.  The chaff flies absolutely everywhere and will happily embed itself in your clothes, your hair, and your socks.   

 

Ani hammering away with the flax break.

    The next step is scutching.  Scutching comes from the Old English or Scottish word scutch meaning "to beat or whip".  Sounds lovely, doesn't it?  The piece of wood that is being used is called a "scutching sword".  Oh, dear...

Flax hackles

    This vicious-looking contraption is a flax hackle, the ultimate in fiber torture devices.  In order to remove the last of the chaff and obtain a fine, smooth, spinnable fiber,  the hanks of flax are run through the nails.  The larger, more widely spaced nails are used for the first few passes, then the middle set, which  is more closely spaced, and then the finest set.  As each bed of nails receives the flax, it becomes finer and finer, eventually resulting in something that looks like blonde hair - "flaxen-haired" - and is ready to spin (almost).  

    Hackling leaves behind coarser and shorter strands of fiber called tow which can be spun into twine or even rope.  A "tow rope" didn't just tow things: it was made of tow  Scott tells me that in processing flax, only 10% of the original plant remains after the entire process is complete, so saving and using every little bit is important.  Tow is also a dandy fire starter, and Scott has caught me more than once mooning over the piles of tow he wants to use for rope and I want to use for kindling.

    Another sneaky entry into the lexicon at this point is "tow-headed", meaning blonde.

                                             Scott holding one of the beautiful hanks of hackled flax

    

    That beautifully hackled flax will happily tangle itself into impenetrable knots if left unattended, so it must be twisted into a strick in order to keep the strands in order

.   Scott takes a handful of the hackled flax he's been working on, goes twisty-twisty, and, hey, presto! a perfect strick lies in his hand.  You would think, being a master spinner, this would be a piece of cake for me.  Nope. I take my handful, set my tongue just so and whine and grumble and curse the day I ever laid eyes on this stuff, and eventually I am rewarded with a less than perfect, but still serviceable, strick. By the way, strick appears in English  about 1400 A.D. and is  apparently the root form of "strike".  More torture.  Poor flax. 

    And after all the growing and harvesting and drying and rippling and retting and more drying and breaking and scutching and hackling and twisting into stricks, it is, at long last, ready to spin.   If you are a wool spinner (feeding, shearing, carding, spinning), you are likely to be exhausted just reading this.

    

    Spinning is my specialty, so this is where my skills enter the picture.  First you need a distaff.  

    A distaff is a stick of some kind that you tie your flax onto.  It can be attached to your wheel like so:

                                                

    Or it can be s stick that sits on the ground like this one or is held in the crook of the arm, which makes it portable.  Many distaffs are simple, but other ones are highly decorative with elaborate carving and painting including one with a beautifully carved image of St. George slaying the dragon.  I do not lie.   

    Since women did most of the spinning, and used distaffs, yet another term creeps stealthily into the language: the "distaff side" meaning the woman's side of the family including her female relatives.  

    Putting the flax onto a distaff is called "dressing", and I think this is the most important part of the entire process of transforming flax into linen.  This is the place where the grower, the processor, and the spinner meet and, metaphorically, shake hands.  As I spinner, I am taking the work of others into my hands to produce thread from the fiber they have spent so much time and effort to bring to my wheel.  

   The lovely little stricks are untwisted and, slowly and carefully, the fibers are fanned out, layer by thin layer, into a fan shape and then rolled onto the distaff.  

We sat in Scott's parlor and chatted about all manner of things while we fanned out our fibers.  Among other topics, I learned all about the various methods of tanning leather, including brain tanning, which is not a conversation one usually overhears at a local Starbucks.  

Fanning out the fibers

  

  Rolling the fanned fibers onto the distaff.

    And finally the drizzly day came that was the culmination of all the work that had been done - spinning!

                                         The Cooksville Schoolhouse where we held the last class session

   

        

    The moment flax is twisted into thread, it is no longer flax; it is linen, and its value increases substantially.  All of the participants in this final class were experienced wool spinners, but none of them had ever spun flax.  They found it quite a challenge to change from their customary wool spinning technique to the technique required for flax, as I had also experienced when I started to spin this fiber.  It's a very different process compared to spinning wool.  Wool is very forgiving, but in spinning flax, there is little room for error.   Some of the participants soon discovered that it was a meditative process once they got the rhythm of it.   While we spun our threads, Scott sat in a corner in the back, quietly teaching himself to spin tow.  He thought nobody noticed.  I did.

     At the end of the class, we all laid our little skeins out on the floor to admire them - even Scott who had to be coaxed into showing his.  It was fascinating to see the differences in the various skeins, and every participant  showed promise in becoming a good flax spinner with practice.

    Learning a dying art brings us closer to the people of the past for whom this was a common, but vital, skill .  For me, it is one more way to experience part of what life was like for rural people in this area during the Victorian era.  When I'm at my wheel with my distaff at my side, my wheel turning steadily, and linen thread running through my hands, I feel a connection to all the women who have done this task before me and to those who keep this skill alive in the face of technology that can do it faster, but not necessarily better, than the work of human hands.