Category Archives: home

Happy Holiday, whichever you celebrate!

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in home and tagged with , , , ,

The knitting is not finished, but there’s nothing more I can do at this hour; each person has a gift.  The presents are not all mailed, but I can’t do anything about it until Monday; I forgot a critical item when we went to the post office in town.  The presents here are not all wrapped, but we will finish that shortly.  The cookies, pies, breads, and cakes are not all baked, but I will get up early tomorrow and do what I can.  And yet, in spite of all this, I do not feel stressed.  Nor guilty, nor sad.  I truly gave up on making everything perfect and settled for the good this year.  Plus, we will have our family over for Christmas – and both Mr. TF and I have the actual day off for the first time in maybe a decade – and we will celebrate together.

May your day be blessed and may you look forward to the returning of the light!

 

The Wood stove saga

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in Economy, home, Independence Days, preparedness, sustainability and tagged with , ,

Well, I had a wood stove contractor come and give us a quote on the purchase and installation of a new wood stove last May.  DH said that was too much money, and we needed to find a cheaper way.  So I started surfing Craigslist.

In August, I finally found a wood stove that was mobile home approved, for half the cost of new, bought it, and brought it home.  I thought, no problem, there are lots of people out of work and surely there will be a contractor who will install this for us.  We didn’t plan to cheat anyone; I knew from the quote how much the rest of the parts and installation were going to be and figured I had saved $500 at least by buying a used stove so that was our savings.  Well, that led to a months long saga with many disappointments and frustrations.

First, the man we bought our range from was a contractor.  I contacted him, he came out and gave us a quote, took me to Home Depot to buy most of the parts, left a list at the local wood stove store (where the first contractor came from with the original quote), and set date to install it.  No show.  He said he had a family emergency.  So we set another date.  No show.  Again, family emergency.  Third date.  No show.  This time he had someone else call us who was not a contractor to see if we wanted him to install it.  The answer was “no” both because he was not a contractor and because his bid was outrageous.

We both started calling around to contractors listed in the area who do wood stove installs.  I got a quote that was very reasonable, but they required me to build the pedestal; I was OK with this but Mr. Tin Foil was not, so he kept looking.  He called a local guy recommended by one of his HAM radio buddies.  This guy came out spent most of his time yelling at his hearing impaired son while giving Mr. TF his quote (note: he was not yelling at the kid because he was hard of hearing, he was yelling at the kid because the dad is an ass.  Read on.)  The quote was also outrageous; when Mr. TF asked him about it, he became defensive but did agree to renegotiate the price.  Ultimately, he and Mr. TF got into a shouting match on the phone later that evening, the contractor threatened to come over and kick Mr. TF’s ass, and hung up on him.  He came over a few days later because he had left his notebook at our house.  He was unapologetic and said “Look.  I charge $1000 per day for me and my guys for any job.  This job will take two days, it’s $2000.  Take it or leave it.”  I started laughing and told him we would leave it, thank you (I believe I may have also said something to the effect that he was smoking crack but I could be mistaken, I may have just thought it).  So on to the search for another contractor.

Mr. TF was very insistent he wanted someone licensed to install it due to the fact that we would have a hole cut in the roof.  Finally he realized that, even though the economy is bad, contractors in general have gotten very cocky and lazy, and think they can completely run the show and get whatever price they ask because they’re in so much demand, and dictate their own hours and just not show up if they don’t feel like it – even though that’s no longer the case.  So I mentioned our friend D.  I had mentioned him earlier, but as I said Mr. TF really wanted a licensed contractor so I didn’t press the issue; he had a very good point and at that point we were still hopeful we could find someone both licensed AND reliable who would install it.

D. came over and gave us a quote that was several hundred dollars UNDER what I had budgeted for the installation.  Now, we’ve been to D’s house many times.  He built an entire addition onto their house and built the fireplace in that addition as well as had done all the tile work.  I knew he did good work, I had seen it myself.  We set a loose date – my only request was that it be done by Thanksgiving because we were having family stay with us.  That agreed, I waited with anticipation for the install.

Poor D!  The two day install took SIX!  He decided on day one that he was going to build the pedestal at his house because he wanted to rip the 2 x 6 boards so the tile would fit EXACTLY.  That took an extra day.  Some of the parts the original contractor had sent me to get were not compatible with other parts he had sent me to get at the wood stove store.  Both Mr. TF and I had to run to the store several times for parts – including the box that goes in the ceiling that connects the double wall pipe with the triple wall pipe – because the box I had purchased was for an entirely different brand, which we didn’t find out until the hole had already been cut and the box installed.  Since the box had to be cut up to fit properly (this is normal) I couldn’t take it back – $79 down the drain.  The new box I got was the wrong length so Mr. TF had to go back to get the right one; the flashing and storm cover was the wrong size and we had to go to yet a third store for one the right size.  The pipes were the same manufacturer but different brands and we had issues with them fitting together; Mr. TF had to go back to the wood stove store for the right part to connect the two.  Finally, at 10 pm on day six, it was officially installed and ready for inspection by the county.  That was the easiest part of the whole thing – you call a computerized line and make a request and they come out the next day to inspect.  Mr. TF was here for that and he said the inspector was very impressed and passed it right away.

Then came the learning curve with using it!  We were having serious issues with smoke rolling out into the house when trying to light it; I set off the smoke detector three times. Then we couldn’t keep it lit; even with the damper fully open and with the fresh air kit (required) being installed there was obviously a draft problem.   Finally we both remembered at the same time that there is a plate on the back of the stove at the base that comes off – Mr. TF took it off and voila – no more draft problem.  After a week of trying we finally managed to get a good fire going and to relight it without difficulty.  I came home last night at 11pm to a lovely fire and a warm house – 72 degrees!  That is the warmest it’s been since the cold snap started, and the warmest it’s been since we quit using the central heating 5 years ago.  Hooray!

Now I just have to figure out how to cook on the top – I need to get another thermometer because I broke my old one, but it was up to 160 degrees the first day we tried to get a fire going.  If it gets hotter than that now that we know what we’re doing we’re in business for soups and bread for sure.

I’m feeling better and better about our security from infrastructure issues.  We’re not ideal by any means, but every step we take gets us a little closer.  Every step we take off the grid means less money we have to depend on for those things.

(ignore the box of handspun on the left)

 

The real wealth of our nation

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in common sense, Crafts, Economy, home, sustainability, the dreaded politics

Gene Logsden at The Contrary Farmer is a brilliant man, a farmer who is one in the real sense of the word, and who is a thoughtful writer and I believe a poet at heart.  He has a new post up regarding ‘self made’ farmers, or Yeomen as he calls them.  I read his new post nodding to myself the whole while, but it was some of the responses to his post that inspired this one.

The day capitalism, as it is now understood, entered the farming community is the day real farming died.  Agribusiness is what now exists for the most part.  Farming involves being at boot level – and sometimes eye level – with TRUE wealth – the land.  Agribusiness involves large air conditioned vehicles, airplanes, computer programs, subsidies, and debt.

What Chiara eludes to is tenant farming, which was a viable method of farming and small holding in Europe for many hundreds of years, and found its demise beginning as far back as the 1500’s when Henry VIII decided that a cash crop, wool, was more important to his personal wealth and power than his subjects.  Of course, there was also that little bit about ‘needing’ a son and lusting after the Church’s wealth.  This lust of course was fueled by the sudden influx of gold and silver to the Spanish via the New World; the resulting wealth unbalanced the power structure of Europe.  The Spanish had driven the Muslims out of Spain a mere 100 years before, and had managed to decimate their country in the process.  They willfully destroyed a productive agricultural and cultural system that was called, with good reason, the Jewel of the World.  Of course, the destroying the agriculture destroyed the nation and it was necessary for the rulers to find another means of bankrolling the country, and FAST.  Their last ditch effort was the expeditions by Columbus  in the late 1400’s to find a trade route to the East that didn’t involve Muslim hands.  Instead of trade routes, he found a society ripe for pillaging.  And pillage they did.

These factors interacted together to destroy a system that had been mutually beneficial for both land holders and land users across Europe and indeed the entire of the Muslim empire.  The end result of loving gold more than people reverberates down the centuries and affects each one of us directly today.

Even in the ‘golden days’ of tenant farming, there was no unbridled capitalism as we know it.  Guilds had exclusive rights that were procured via royal decree to produce goods and services; their products were protected by law and they were diligent in making sure guild members had the skills and knowledge required to produce quality goods.  They did this in order to maintain that exclusive right.

It is also worth mentioning that barter was the basic way of conducting business – A sheep herder would receive back so much spun yarn in trade for his wool; the spun yarn could be traded for fabric or goods from yet another merchant; those goods in turn could be used to pay rents or taxes to the landlord.  The poor acquired permission to ‘wool gather’ in the fields of the sheep and helped with household chores in return.  Money was not, for most of society, the means of trade.  Everyone understood that the land was the source of their sustenance and was the source of wealth.  Until the ‘discovery’ of the New World, that is.  The resulting flood of precious metals into the Old World shifted the focus of the entire culture away from maintaining the land to lusting after money.  Without the overarching need to protect the lands as the source of wealth, societies began to over-harvest trees for ship building for further transfers from the New to the Old worlds, which resulted in the decimation of the forests and the loss of the native wildlife.  This in return meant that the average subject was pushed off the land into the cities, increasing the poor populations which encouraged disease to spread.  It also meant that inventions were sought to replace what the tenant farmers and guilds had originally provided:   the food, goods, and services necessary to the running of a society.  It is sobering to think that the seeds of our industrial society, our current views of wealth and capitalism, were sown in the 1400’s.

It is the primacy of money over wealth that has been the downfall of our worldwide system.  Capitalism, in its strictest sense, simply doesn’t work.  One cannot value money over land, livestock, and people without destroying the true wealth –which is the land, livestock, and people.  Only when society at large realizes this, and concurrently realizes that wealth requires work, will the disaster we face begin to be mitigated.  I do not hold out much hope for that though.  Not as long as there are TV’s everywhere.

Limits

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in common sense, home, work

I quit one of my jobs on Sunday.  I was apologetic for the short (as in NO) notice, but explained that I simply can’t work in the hospital environment any more.  I get too stressed out, and my anxiety makes me vulnerable to making mistakes.  I can’t afford mistakes when I’m going to be in a master’s program in five months.

It was a strange feeling to realize that middle age really does begin imposing limits.  I was thinking that the limits were mostly physical, and that I could stave them off for quite a while by just keeping flexible, active, agile.  Nope.  Just like broken bones don’t heal as well in our forties as they did in our twenties, the beating the emotions and psyche take don’t heal as well in our forties either.

Interestingly, both of the house supervisors that I spoke with agreed that the hospital environment there is…extreme.  In fact that is a quote from one of them.  Both wished me luck and said it was the hospital’s loss.  There would have been a time when I would have agreed, but not today.  I think it is best for both me and for the hospital I do not work there.

The garden is winding down; the temperature in the day is in the 80′s but our first frost date is estimated for the 29th.  That’s not nearly enough time for anything that’s not already ripening to finish; I’ll probably get out there and begin pulling plants for the composter later this week.  NOT a great year for the garden.  Since this was the first year I actually got a Thai hot plant to grow, let alone fruit, I may put that into a pot and bring it in for the winter.

I have a feeling it will be a more powerful than usual Samhain.

The Economy of Food

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in common sense, Economy, home, work

ETA:  I raised three boys on about $9000 per year, without the help of food stamps.  And they did not eat very much frozen or fast food.  We ate a lot of Chinese type foods, and a lot of vegetarian meals, and cooked from scratch was pretty much normal.  So I know whereof I speak.

H/T Sharon Astyk for the link and her commentary on her blog; what she has to say as well as the comments on her blog are well worth considering.  I just have a few insights of my own to add.

A new article in Harvard Magazine discusses the rise of restaurant culture in America, and makes some statements regarding eating out and food in general that I just don’t agree with.  They state, for one, that eating at McDonald’s is cheaper than eating at home.  Really?  What about the gas it takes to drive there?  At four dollars a gallon?  And McDonald’s cannot accept food stamps because food stamps can only be used for UNcooked food.  For instance, you can buy a burrito at the local gas/mart, pay for it with food stamps – THEN put it into their microwave and cook it, but you cannot cook it first and then pay for it with food stamps.  Now, that may be possible, but again, it’s still fast food, and not a very good use of a finite resource – your food stamps.  At last reading, 1 in 8 adults and 1 in 4 children eat thanks to food stamps.  That is a LOT of the population relying on them.  All of these people are faced with being money poor, and I would suspect that buying a burger at McDonald’s, is putting a further strain on an already strained budget that must also pay rent, utilities, gas, etc.

So, McDonald’s may have cheap food, but you have to factor in the cost of gas to get there, the fact that there is next to zero nutritional content in the food, the time spent driving to and from versus staying at home and cooking, and the loss of that money to purchase other necessary goods/services.  Not to mention the nutritional content versus McDonald’s, or even a frozen burrito compared to home cooked food.

I am astounded that people really think they do not have time to cook.  Now, I can believe that they may be too tired to cook.  When I come home from a shift where I work, I am lucky if I have not had to fight nodding off in the car, and I get home with exactly enough time to get my clothes and food around, and go to bed and get ready to do it all over again in the morning.  But my situation is not really normal, except for others who also work 12 or more hours in a day.  But.  Notice one particular thing in my previous statement.  Get my food around.

Yes, I take my own lunch.  On my days off, or on days my husband is home and he cooks, we deliberately make enough for leftovers.  Last night’s dinner becomes today’s lunch.  A meal at the cafeteria, or at McDonald’s costs at least $6.  Taking my lunch costs perhaps $2, if it was an expensive dish.  Often my meal costs 50 cents or less.  A meal of curried lentils and rice with slivered almonds, and some pickles, costs perhaps that 50 cents.  It takes time to make the pickles, of course, but that time is amortized across an entire year until I do it again – one or two marathon days of canning dill, bread and butter pickles, dilly beans, and relish mean we have those things for the rest of the year. The lentils are maybe 99 cents for a pound, and I use a cup which I am guessing is about a quarter pound for the meal; the rice is also about a dollar a pound and I use 2 cups of that.  The almonds are the expensive part; they are garnish though and a quarter cup is more than enough for the meal.  The spices of course are expensive but like the pickles the price is amortized across every meal I prepare with them.  Then of course, there is the cost of utilities both to prepare and to clean up.  Even so, I think that my meal made at home, which takes about 10 minutes to prep and 30 minutes to cook, still takes both less time and money than that meal from McDonald’s.  Plus, my meal gives us leftovers and feeds us for at least one other meal.

Or say we had poached salmon in a cream sauce with peas over pasta.  The salmon obviously is the expensive portion of the meal; I believe it was $8 or $9 per pound the last time I shopped.  Well, we use perhaps 10 ounces for both of us in this meal, probably more like 7 or 8 ounces.  So that’s much more expensive than the lentils, but we are still less than the McDonald’s meal so far, say $4.  I only purchase pasta when it’s on sale, so it’s usually about $1 for a package at most.  We use perhaps a third to a half package for this recipe.  The peas I buy early in the season, in bulk, and keep frozen, so they’re maybe $1 per pound.  We use a cup of peas in this recipe.  It uses 1/4 cup butter as well as 1 cup cream which we substitute with milk and a little cornstarch for thickening.  A little garlic which we grow ourselves, some salt and pepper, and 1/4 cup onion which we may or may not have grown in the garden.  This meal will feed us for at least two full meals.  So the cost, $9 say, actually is still cheaper than the McDonald’s meal because that cost gets divided in half – $4.50 to feed us both.  Twice.  The time it takes to make this meal is approximately 40 minutes. Possibly more time than McDonald’s, but certainly still cheaper.  I would guess that my meal, eaten in the quiet of my home, or on my deck, is less stressful as well.

Or say we just make beans and rice.  Typical subsistence food, made in the crock pot.  Pennies to make, next to no time in active preparation, and feeds us until we’re so sick of it we give the last bit to the chickens.

There is no possible way that eating at McDonald’s is cheaper than eating at home, even if you factor in utilities!

The denseness of the nutrition of my home prepared foods, as well as the lack of preservatives and other assorted nasties, means that even with butter as one of the chief ingredients (organic naturally) that my meal is significantly healthier, and more filling with smaller portion sizes, than anything McDonald’s can offer.  Spiritually, McDonald’s can offer nothing to me or my family either.  My kitchen is the center of my house, both literally and figuratively.  How can McDonald’s compete with that?

No, making an idiotic statement like the one quoted in the article above is simply a lie, whether perpetrated deliberately or out of ignorance.  The sad part is that McDonald’s profits by this ignorance, and the general ignorance of our young people in how to cook.  THAT is perhaps the most troubling part of this article.  People spend hours watching food and cooking shows, but do not learn how to do it themselves.

Perhaps the best thing I could do for my community while I’m home for a while is to offer cooking classes.  They wouldn’t have to be anything so unusual as what we eat, just simple foods – pot roast, potatoes, veggies.  Meatloaf.  Mashed potatoes.  Fried chicken.  These are simple meals, but take skill to make well. And most importantly, since I would bet that 90% of the population is on, or qualifies for food stamps, these are nutritionally dense meals which can be made with things food stamps will purchase, unlike my burrito example from the frozen food section.

Food for thought.

What’s been going on at Tin Foil Acres?

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in common sense, Crafts, home, Independence Days

Lots of things.

The psychiatrist I saw, as well as the counselor, both said they are seeing a lot of nurses with the same stress related issues; one even said that ER and ICU nurses are getting the worst of it.  So I guess it’s not me, it’s just that I don’t have very good coping skills.  And that’s my homework for the next few months.  ‘Nuf said about that.

While I have read two novels – the first non-fiction I’ve read in more than two years – I haven’t been lying around eating bon bons.  Things have been busy here.  I’ve been weaving along on an 8 yard warp of cotton boucle towels; I cleaned, organized, and labelled all our spices; I cleaned the kitchen to my exacting standards and have been doing my best to keep it that way; together we have been working in the garden which has been very very nice; we have put up fencing in half the front yard and I’m working on lining the bottom with rocks to keep out the rabbits and skunks; I’ve been spinning and knitting and even dying a little; and I applied for a business license for my little fiber arts factory.  This last is because if I want to sell at craft fairs or events, I have to have one.  Plus it allows me to buy at cost without paying the taxes, which means that I can actually attempt to make a little money from my crafting; especially for weaving, if I have to buy at retail and pay taxes on my supplies, it means that I work and sell for free.  Not exactly what I had in mind.  I do plan to do a post on the relative costs of ready – made clothing from the turn of the 20th century to the 21st, but it might be a bit.

I have also been canning.  Yes, it’s that time of year again, and I’m grateful not to have to try to fit this in between grueling shifts right now.  I spent 9 hours one day making blueberry jam, strawberry jam, and peach butter.  I buy in bulk from Bountiful Baskets which is like a coop or a CSA but you don’t have to have a subscription and you’re not obligated to buy every week.  So when they have something in bulk I want, I buy the basket which allows me to buy the bulk items as well.  This time I got five pounds of strawberries and 25 pounds of peaches; the blueberries have been in the freezer for a while and I wanted to just do it all at once and get it done.  I can outside on my camp stove so I don’t heat up the house, which means that at times I come in to get out of the heat.  Unfortunately, I got distracted during my first batch of peach butter (6 hours into the marathon day) and it boiled – and burned badly – to the bottom of my pot.  Ugh.  I’m still alternating elbow grease and SOS pads with oven cleaner to try to get the mess off the bottom of the pot.   Good thing my time is cheap right now.

Time off from ‘official’ work, but no rest for the weary here!  Truly, home making is a full time job; most days I try to be up by 6 or 630 so we can get the watering and gardening maintenance done before the heat sets in; then breakfast and reading the news; then to work on the home tasks; then spinning or knitting or designing  or weaving, whichever has been neglected the most recently.  Then more outside stuff, then dinner, then a walk around the neighborhood.  By the time 9 pm rolls around I’m pretty well beat.  And that’s about it for around here.

truth.

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in common sense, home, sustainability

I joined facebook because it’s the only way my children seem to communicate these days.  And thus it’s the only way to keep up with their lives.  I still am not a fan though.  And I still have my privacy settings set to max.  And I only have ‘friends’ who are family members, friends, or friendly acquaintances that I have vetted, in real life.

It’s no substitute for real people.  Facebook friends don’t give you kleenex when you’re crying.  Real friends do.

Spinning a little history

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in common sense, Crafts, home, sustainability

I spin my own yarns; I learned to spin in 2002 but didn’t get serious about it until 2005.  I became interested in spinning after I began knitting regularly again; quality yarns aren’t cheap, and the only way I could afford the kinds of yarn I wanted to knit with was to learn to spin my own.  I began my spinning journey with a very modern wheel which as with many things modern, looks pretty cool, seems like it’s a good idea, but just doesn’t hold up to actual use.  In fact, it mostly sat in my living room because I had such a difficult time actually spinning with it.  It required a large brick wedged behind it to keep it from creeping across the floor because it’s so light, and the type of tension mechanism on the bobbin meant that for me as a beginner, once I filled that bobbin I was never going to get the tension the same for the next one.   In 2005  I took my spinning wheel, that PVC Babe, with me every Wednesday for six weeks to a “learn to spin” class in Mesa.  That is how I learned that while a $200 wheel *can* be a good bargain — if it’s the right one — it was not a good bargain for me because I really didn’t like this wheel.  So, once again, that wheel sat in the corner, neglected and unloved, while I finished up school and dreamed of spinning with a ‘real’ wheel.

Now, I do respect the contributions of modern technology.  Antibiotics are literally life savers, and I probably wouldn’t be here today if they weren’t around; a good many of the people I know today would also be either dead or handicapped in some way without antibiotics.  But, as with any technology, it can and has been misused and overused, and the downsides we are beginning to see today.  Spinning wheels today are also the product of modern technology; many makers have devoted a lot of time and effort into producing a wheel that utilizes the best engineering designs one can think of to produce wheels that are light, clean looking, and give spinners features they desire.  Spinolution is one such company.

So, when I decided that the problem was indeed, the wheel and not my inability to spin, I began doing research.  I initially decided I was not interested in an antique wheel, because I didn’t know enough about how wheels worked in general to know how to fix one, and I didn’t yet know there was a HUGE spinning and weaving guild right in my neighborhood.  I also didn’t think I was interested in a traditional style of wheel (like what you think of when you think of a wheel probably) because I wanted something small and light that I could get out and put in the corner when I was done.  I wanted a wheel that would be easy to spin on, without a lot of gadgets or requiring constant fiddling, and I didn’t want to have to change bobbins very often.  When I completed my research, I went to the newly discovered local fiber store, and there was a Mach 1 there as a display, just waiting for me to try out.  I went home with that wheel a week later, convinced I had eluded all possible spinning related problems — it was already finished, so no warping; it had sealed bearings, so no oiling; it had a carry handle and wheels, so easy movement; HUGE bobbins so no frequent changes.

Three years later, I realized that buying a wheel that looks and spins NOTHING like many traditional wheels doesn’t mean I avoided spinning related – rather, technology related – problems.  The unique treadle design whereupon the double treadle is a unit, and the wheel has an offset pittman arm, is warping AWAY from the pittman arm and I have already put spacers in it to try to correct for that.  It is getting worse, and eventually I may not be able to treadle at all.  Those ginormous bobbins I was so happy about?  Well, they’re so heavy that I have frequent breaks in my yarn while plying.  Plus, I can’t fill them more than half way if I’m going to do certain types of plying because the finished yarn doesn’t all fit on the bobbin if I do. To make matters worse, the drive band is rubber and I’ve been through SEVEN  of them in the three years I’ve had the wheel!  Now, for someone concerned about TEOTAWTKI this was a really poor choice for a wheel, which I hadn’t realized when I bought it.   This and other problems sent me on a quest to learn exactly HOW my spinning wheel worked, how it was similar to others and how it was different, and how traditional wheels (and those based on traditional designs) overcome those problems.  In the course of my research, I realized that many of the problems I was experiencing did not exist in traditional wheels, and that they were designed the way they were for very good and sound engineering principles, time tested from the Middle Ages until the present.

Enter the beauty above.  She is an antique.  Her table — the slanty piece of wood — is solid oak, with tiny little fluted designs like a pie crust on each end.  The turnings are maple, I believe; I don’t know for sure but that was a very common type of wood for turnings (the legs, axle arms, etc).  She was probably made in the Midwest and brought out here in the late 1800′s; she was a Chandler based wheel for at least the last 70 years, so I assume she came out with Mormon pioneers from Nebraska or something like that.  She was purchased in the late 40′s or early 50′s by a woman in Chandler who passed down to her daughter, who passed it to her daughter.  The first two generations of women used it for decoration, never to spin, but she was in a climate controlled home, with regular dusting and occasional waxing, for all those years.  I bought it from the 3rd generation woman to have it, who didn’t want it – it didn’t fit with her decor.  I couldn’t believe it when I saw her, but she was in good working order other than some minor issues and I paid a very reasonable price for her.

Her flyer – the part that holds the bobbin, and has a profile like a bird in flight had a large crack on one side, and the hooks that hold the yarn were rusted through.

Luckily, this is only on one side, and I was able to remove and replace the hooks on the other.  Her bobbin was glued to the flyer shaft because of years of dried oil and shellac mixing with dirt, but I was able to free it, clean it, and restore it to working order in a matter of two days of alcohol, Q tips, elbow grease, and a dremel tool with a grinding attachment (to help ream out the dried stuff from the inside of the bobbin hole).  Several coats of Feed N Wax later, and the addition of a drive belt made from crochet cotton, she was ready and willing to spin. She’s not a wheel for a beginner, and I finally know enough and have enough skill to be up to the challenge of a wheel like her.

It was truly an awesome and eery feeling to know that I was the first person in probably 70 years to spin on her.  The wheel probably spun enough yarn and flax to clothe a family for a lifetime, and then sat for a lifetime.  She’ll be well taken care of here, and put to work as she was designed.  The small bobbin problem I was so afraid of is compounded by the fact that she only has one — so I will need to be creative in my solutions for that.  There are solutions, though.   I have learned more about spinning wheel technology and workings in the last month than I learned in the last 10.

Oh, and one more wheel:  Henrietta.  I bought her at an antique store right after I got Miss Saxony (reference to the style of wheel) thinking that I could swap flyers and have an extra bobbin.  Nope.  Nice try though.  So now I have a true flax wheel with a distaff (holds flax for spinning) that can also double as a travel wheel, because she’s so light.

She’s a cute little thing, but she doesn’t capture my heart the way Miss Saxony does.  She’s in good shape minus a few minor problems, and she spins wool not so well, but I can’t wait to try flax on her.  She is a true flax wheel and doesn’t want to spin wool – the flyer doesn’t spin fast enough to put enough twist in the wool to hold it together.  Flax is such a long fiber it doesn’t need very much twist.

So that’s my journey on the technology path of spinning.  I started out completely high tech, and have ended up completely traditional.  I plan to keep my Mach 1, and hopefully I can get her fixed, and she’ll end up being my plying wheel for sure.  Those ginormous bobbins will be good for something!