My Mother's Spinning Wheel

I have recently "inherited" (for lack of a better word) my mother's spinning wheel. It is a lovely piece of wooden art, created by my grandfather, Hugo Bartz, in the 1970's, when my mother was a teacher of crafts at the Kelowna Secondary School in British Columbia. At the time, schools offered optional courses geared to creating hobbies and lifelong interests. One fitness course, for example, taught golf and tennis - sports that students could pursue throughout their lives.

At the time, there was a renewal of interest in traditional crafts - candle-making, pottery, knitting, crocheting - and also spinning and weaving. My mother loved learning some of these skills her own mother had known, but which she had never bothered to learn - skills that many thought were gone forever.

My grandfather, remembering his own mother's spinning wheel, offered to make one for my mother. My mother, in turn, used it to spin yarn - some of which she dyed by hand, teaching her students those skills as well.

My mother had a big weaving loom in the back porch of her Lawrence Avenue home in Kelowna. I recently came across a table cloth she wove on it, though I think this is made of cotton, not wool.













Her name is sewn on a label in the corner.



















I preferred knitting and crocheting to weaving - but my daughter is now interested in the art of dyeing fabric ...

So perhaps spinning will also be practiced in our family by another generation.