Cabin Crafted

Tag: teaching

  • An Educator

    This is teacher appeciation week. Thank a teacher for the impact they had on you or your child. For 43 years, I was an educator, retiring when I could begin to collect Social Security. For a few years after retirement, the only teaching I did was helping a local summer camp, teaching some spinning, weaving, and salve making. Then a friend who had been volunteering at a local museum couldn’t fulfill a day they needed a spinner and I connected with a volunteer activity that allowed me to demonstrate in a Colonial historical context, fiber arts. The program director at that museum moved to a different location, a little farther from our farm, but still under an hour to get there and I followed her, volunteering at events, and as she developed a program and relationship with the area school districts, as a teaching volunteer.

    Generally, I am in a 1769 log, 10 by 10 foot cabin that houses a great wheel and a barn loom.

    We have classes from second grade, fourth grade, and sixth grade that visit the museum at different times of the year. In my usual role, I am teaching about fiber production, processing, and clothing on the frontier. The village was chartered in 1810, so still very early in our country’s history, and through a period where trade was virtually stopped due to the Revolutionary War, and limited after the war due to the distance from the coastal trade ports.

    Today, a very rainy day, we had about 60 second graders visiting. And a different hat as one of our volunteers was unavailable, I was in the old separate kitchen talking about household life and how different it was then compared to what the kids experience today. The limitation of types of food, as most of what we eat now is imported or hybridized versions of what a local in western Virginia would have had available as well as the difficulty of storage, cooking on a fireplace, the soap making, candle making, fiber growth and processing, and how it was mostly a cashless society with bartering the most common form of trade.

    I may be a very senior citizen, but teaching is still in my blood and I love the volunteer opportunity that is there for me. I hope to be able to continue doing this for many more years.

  • A New Treasure

    I knit because I make yarn, but given the opportunity to just sell the yarn I make, I would just spin.

    Today, a friend that I started on spinning about a year ago came over with a bag of gorgeous Leicester Longwool lamb roving, and an entire Leicester Longwool lamb fleece in the raw. After she started spinning with a drop spindle I gave her, then a Turkish spindle I sold her, she bought several more spindles on her own, and then the travel wheel that I had tried her on. I had gotten a small Saxony wheel made by Kromski and previously owned by a good friend who passed away. The little Saxony is one I can take to retreats and to costumed demonstrations and the travel wheel was not being used. She has become quite a good spinner, but is having some difficulty with the travel wheel due to it’s size. She came over to discuss how to clean raw wool, to try my Kromski to see if it might be a wheel for her to seek out, and a lesson in using wool combs. We had a very nice afternoon playing with fiber and broadening her scope a bit.

    After she left, I anxiously dashed up to the mailbox as I was awaiting my newest spinning treasure, a Golding spindle that with it’s dark wood and black ring will be one I can take to demonstrations. Each Golding comes with a small sample of wool usually from Inglenook Fibers. I had just ordered some fiber from them and looked at the colorway that was sent as a sample. If I had just waited a few days, I not only would have bought that colorway, but would have gotten a discount from them. Maybe if I sell another pair of fingerless mitts or a hat, I will return to their online shop and purchase more of it.

    This spindle spins forever. I love my little Jenkins Turkish spindle, it is fun to use and to ply from but very limited in amount it will hold, but the Goldings are primo.