One one of our trips there a few years ago, I had seen a spinning wheel in the attic, or so I thought. I wasn't spinning then, just feverishly knitting, so it was only of moderate interest. I reminded my husband this time around and he said that he didn't think so, but he'd check.
So we brought it up with my Father-in-law, who immediately knew what I was talking about and said that in fact, they had no less than SIX spinning wheels in the attic! EEEEEK! Imagine my delight! There was also a picker (i think), a skein winder, and a huge bag of raw wool!
The wheels were beautiful, in particular 2 very ornate castle-stlye wheels. Naturally its all hand turned everything. Two of the wheels had decorative ivory tips. Simply gorgeous. I'm not terribly sure because I only extensively cleaned and repaired one of the wheels, but they all looked intact and usable.
The one I spun on was a double tension, single treadle castle wheel, with only one ratio (as far as i could tell) which happened to be superfast. It spun nicely and had a nice soft clickety-clack sort of rhythm. I managed to get about 2 ounces on a bobbin. The bobbins are comparatively small, but I'm thinking that it was much more common to get a lot of yardage out of a small amount of fiber.
What was fascinating about these wheel is their lack of metal parts. Except for the metal spoke the bobbin sits on (not sure what thats called, except part of the flyer) and the flyer hooks (below is the flyer, labelled C), there is not a lick of metal on the wheel. Everything is joined using wooden pegs. The movable parts like the footman (see J, below) use a very soft (even now, after decades of storage)leather.
If you'd like to know what everything else is called, the labels can be found at The Joy of Handspinning
In my unpacking efforts I seemed to have misplaced the bazillions of pics from our trip. As soon as it is located, I'll be sure to post a few of them!
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