a friend of ours teaches third grade at a local motessori charter school. a few months ago, she mentioned to me that they were going to do a unit on wool -- a sort of school-days sheep-to-something. she wanted to know if i knew where to get raw wool. i suggested she look in my garage, since there are about 10 fleeces pining away in there waiting for my stupid shoulder to heal.
so on sunday, maria came over to pick up some supplies and get started on a crash course in wool. i lent her a fleece (she wanted an extra messy one for the kids to clean, so i wasn't sorry to part with it), two combs, and my spinning library, such as it is. (we decided the drum carder was a little too dangerous to have around little kids, but we did play with it for awhile....)
then we looked at some great websites about cleaning wool, carding, building a drop spindle, and spinning on a drop spindle.
it was a lot of fun and a great reminder of how much i love (and miss) spinning. i even got suzie out and practiced a little to give maria an idea of the basic mechanics. it wasn't pretty, since i haven't spun in about a year, but it was fun and i did eventually get something going that looked like real yarn. at least, my two friends who've never seen a spinning wheel in their lives were impressed.
at the end of week one, maria reports that the kids are having a blast -- and all they've really done is pick dirt out of the fleece. apparently today they were going to make their own drop spindles. this means maria and i have to act fast to learn how to spin! (i've only ever used a wheel).
depending on my workload next week, suzie and i may pay the class a little visit to talk about spinning and show off some hand-made yarn. and in the spring, apparently i'm going to be invited to join them on a field trip to the musk ox farm -- now we're talking!
Posted by cmandala at February 16, 2007 05:24 PM