Spinning Demo at Coffee Morning

The chill winter winds didn’t keep the lively bunch of ladies away from the Cancer Society Coffee Morning today.  Our guest speaker was Audrey, who talked to us about fleece and spinning.  In the old days, a spinner had to know a friendly farmer to get a fleece to spin.  Not so these days, all sorts of different wools, mixes, and even silk and linen is available for the home spinner to purchase.  There was a sample of  Gotland wool, the type of wool used to make the Magic Elven cloaks  in THe Lord of the Rings films.  These rare and unusual grey 'Stansborough Gotland' sheep, are the only flock of their kind in the world and produce fibre which is strong, soft and lustrous. Audrey passed around different varieties of wool for us to see and touch, including this long length of felting.

Audrey with her felting

Bags of different fibres available today

I was very interested to watch one of the ladies demonstrate a Ply Pull.  This handy little device makes yard without actually using a spinning wheel.

Using a Ply Pull

Audrey then did a spinning demonstration, and related how relaxing sitting at a spinning wheel can be.  It takes a bit of time to work out how to get the wool coming through nice and even but practice makes perfect, we were told.

Spinning demonstration

And wonder of wonders – who would know there was such a thing as an electric spinning wheel?  Not me, that’s for sure.  These electric machines take up a lot less room, and are handy for people who can not use the foot pedals on a standard spinning wheel.

Electric spinning machine

We had a nice morning tea, and I bought a raffle ticket for a bread-maker and a basket of goodies.  Then I checked out the sales table and  found a jar of home made marmalade waiting for me to buy it and take it home.  It was a very pleasant get-together, as always.