The One Notebook Principle

From: November 4, 2017

A long time ago, when I was a child, I read Little House in the Highlands by Melissa Wiley where the main character wants to learn to use a spinning wheel like her sister.  Her parents think she is too young but her mother digs out an old drop spindle so the girl can feel like she’s learning to spin her as well.  At the time, I didn’t have much interest in spinning wheels (that would come later), but the girl is described as going all over happily spinning on a drop spindle and I decided rather firmly that I wanted to learn how to do this.  I then promptly told no one and, while the idea of it never went away, it became buried under school, books, computers, etc.

Flash forward about twenty years or so and I finally put a drop spindle on my Christmas list (apparently I’m hard to shop for so I still get asked for a list by family and friends).  I provided a website of a fibers store where you could buy a drop spindle and did my best to explain this seemingly odd request to my family.  On Christmas Day my mother came through in her usual, fantastic way.  I received two drop spindles, two books, one instructional DVD, and a giant box of ready-to-spin wool from various sheep breeds.  

In a flurry of motivation and excitement, I promptly started reading the instructional book, watching the DVD, and trying out the spindles.  Then I promptly lost interest as my time was overtaken by work.  I’m a teacher so my enthusiasm and free time lasted about as long as winter break.  I’ve taken out the spindles every so often, and attempted to use my misshapen “yarn” for dryer balls (more on this later), but have yet to get back into them in quite the way I’ve wanted.  It’s something I want to change and will require a good amount of attention and discipline, especially as I also have a new-to-me spinning wheel.  Interestingly, and for reasons I’ll write about later, I think I like the drop spindles a bit better.  There’s a certain level of control with the drop spindle that is missing for me right now on the wheel, though of course I’ve been using the drop spindles for a bit longer, even if I’m still not very good with them.