spinning

I caved.

Today I balanced my checkbook and discovered that I will have enough money to get me to the begining of summer comfortably. I bought the textbooks I still need and had a little left over in the budget. So I caved and bought a spindle kit.

In the kit I get a basic top down spindle from The Bellweather, fleece to practice on, and a simple instruction manual to help me understand the basics and it was about $15 with shipping. I justify this purchase in two ways:

1. It's less than a good skein of sock yarn would cost, and probably many hours of entertainment.

2. If I get the job at Kline Creek I can bring my own spindle and fiber to work with.

3. I've been dreaming about spinning. Clearly this is the will of the gods.

Feeling all inspired and eager to get started, I walked down to the Appleton Public Library to check out what literature they had about spinning. The answer is almost nothing. They did however have "Women's Work: the first 20,000 years" which has so far been completely riveting. I know not everyone is into this kind of stuff but I think it's facinating. The author relies on linguistics and archaeology to piece together a chronological narrative of prehistoric textile working. She talks about the evidence for the different stages of textile production (rope making, spinning, weaving) and the tools that helped each come about. Because I don't know much about weaving, alot of her more technical points are lost on me, but I love how she explains the economic rationale behind the sexual division of labor and why textiles have long been considered women's work.