
As you can see from the above photo, taken a couple of years ago in our up north guest house, our grandsons Joel and Nathaniel are fascinated by my beloved craft of spinning.
The fact that I knit sweaters, hats, shawls, and scarves from my hand spun yarns (spun from sheep wool, llama hair, mohair from angora goats, dog hair, and/or silk) lends a practical purpose to this ancient but currently popular art. The easy-to-comprehend mechanics of a spinning wheel add to the marvelous mystique of spinning: engendered in those of us who were raised on the tales of Hans Christian Andersen and The Brothers Grimm.
The wheel pictured above is one of my 5 spinning wheels. It’s a replica of the Irish Castle Wheel, and it is the one I use most often as it’s easy to move from room to room—or out to the patio where I sit and spin on warm days. The wheel’s main location is our living room next to the Saxony wheel which I also use frequently and love. Both wheels (pictured below along with my yarns and some of the garments) have the same mechanism with exchangeable bobbins. They are Jensen wheels—made in Lake Delton, Wisconsin—and they are “top of the line” in performance as well as exquisite beauty.
As I keyboard on my laptop, I can honestly say that I love old things best: old appliances, old tools, old dishes, old artifacts of most any kind. That may sound oxymoronic as I blog, gather information, and do most of my shopping online (with the exception of groceries). Sometimes I even write letters on the laptop, although email is my least favorite computer function. There is nothing, no nothing in the world like a real letter on pretty stationery. The ever-escalating cost of postage will never dim my fondness for the U. S. Postal Service!
New things can be useful, even delightful—as in the case of favorite kitchen appliances like my BREADMAN, electric percolator, and blender for those refreshing smoothies. I’m on friendly terms with a refrigerator, and an electric oven and range. I have no desire to cook on wood, even though I’ve nostalgic recollections of my Grandma Rose doing exactly that.
We have a dishwasher, which we do not use—as dishes are too lovely to stash in a machine, and I get much pleasure out of washing them and seeing them lined up in the drying rack on a kitchen counter. When we had little children and babies, I thought differently and did use a dishwasher. Now the dishwasher is one of our resident “museums”. It houses old kitchen gadgets, cookie cutters, etc. which were once used by departed family members—or culled from garage sales and antique shops.
Flush toilets and running water are luxuries I’ll never take for granted. I love them and would not want to go back to using an outhouse, and pumping and hauling water. It’s fun to recall the fact that we had only an outhouse (and slop pails for nighttime use) at our summer cottage in the 1940s—and that we hauled water for drinking, cooking, and washing. But having “been there, done that”, I certainly don’t wish to return.
No! Other than periodically eschewing a few things like email, I don’t want to go back. But I do want to preserve, and whenever possible use and enjoy vestiges of the past through home arts such as spinning on my spinning wheels.
Why is preservation so important? I believe that an appreciation of the past is a vital dimension of life in the present! Quite basically, we have roots. Just as a plant is nourished by its God-given roots, we are nourished by ours. Roots are part of our down-to-earth quality of life, and they are instrumental in that profound pleasure which we derive from simple, everyday things. Without an appreciation of our roots, we would be plastic people—sterile, robotic, generic, and boring!
Family roots are vital but so are cultural, lifestyle roots. I’m not alone in my passion for roots, as evidenced in the popularity of THE ANTIQUES ROADSHOW and the crowds that throng to living history museums. Life is richer today when we know something about yesterday!
Our home is blessed to be a mini living history museum, one in a constant state of production with spinning wheels, baskets of wool (still remaining from 20 years of raising my own sheep), a surplus of knitting needles, and a plethora of hand spun yarn and hand fashioned garments!

NOTE: The 3 shawls on your left as you face this photo are some of many that I wove on my 24″ Baby Wolf Loom–one of 2 looms which are currently still up north due to lack of room for them in our condo. Having only 2 hands, I manage to keep my fingers moving fast enough as it is with spinning and knitting.
The “center stage” colorful striped scarf is one I knit over this past winter from yarns which I recently spun and dyed. Embellished with funky beads and a crocheted border, the scarf is wide enough to double as a stole.
It always freaks me out, when people look at my spinning wheels and call them “looms”. More education and advocacy are needed in the area of the fiber arts!
Occasionally, I spin for public events. People always cluster around the spinning demos, and ask wonderful questions. How great to be able to promote an appreciation of this time-honored craft! 🙂
Margaret L. Been—All Rights Reserved
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