Last week, Himself got me up at the crack of dawn to go to an auction with him over the border in Clarence, New York. I didn’t really want to go – I’m not an early morning person, and I’d already scrutinized the online auction catalogue and not seen anything that thrilled me. But marriage is full of little compromises, and if he really wanted my growly, caffeine-starved company, then who was I to stay in bed? (My nice, warm comfy bed…) So we drove out into the cold rosy light of dawn, me grumbling into my take-out coffee and picking through the Timbit box for the good ones.
Ah… but when we arrived at the auction, what did I see? Wait, this wasn’t in the catalogue! And there weren’t any other spinners there to bid against me… oh, frabjous day!
And another antique wheel has found a home here with me. It’s a lovely creature; it has a distaff, though I didn’t include it in the photo. It’s marked on the side of the table “W Kilbourn” and I suspect that it hasn’t travelled very far; its design is very common among 19th and early 20th century wheels made in the northeastern United States. If I were to take a wild guess, I would say it’s from New York State – perhaps the Albany area? – and possibly dates somewhere in the mid to late 1800′s. More research is needed.
It badly needs to be taken apart, cleaned and rebuilt; the flyer hooks are gone and will have to be replaced. I rigged up a very crude woollie-winder (a bent paper clip – ah, MacGyver would be proud!) and spun up a bobbin or two – just for testing purposes, right?
A lovely bit of carded Jacob fleece, dyed by Dan of Gnomespun Yarns in shades of red, brown, gold, and green – I bought it at Rhinebeck; I think it was called “Pheasant”, and the name suits. (Digression: Dan has just successfully defended his dissertation and can now claim to have Piled it Higher & Deeper, and call himself a Doctor of Something That Probably Couldn’t Be Explained To Me Even If He Used Small Words. Congratulations, Dan!)
And now, I’m off to ply.
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