The Great Wheel

I have read about Great Wheels, and seen one in pieces (though never one all together or in working condition). They’re neat wheels … they are older than the flyer wheels that we normally think of when we thing “spinning wheel”. Essentially, a great wheel takes a drop spindle and puts it on it’s side, using a great big wheel (which the user turns by hand) to put the spin on the spindle. The spinner walks while spinning – pacing backwards while drawing out the yarn from the spindle with one hand and turning the wheel with the other, then pacing forwards to wind on the finished single. They are meditative to use, as you learn the dance of fibre and wheel.

Now, lovely as they are, they are huge. They need room to walk in order to use them. I have a house full of wheels. No need to add a great wheel to  the mix.

You see where this is going, don’t you?

So … I’m checking out the ads on Kijiji, like I always do, looking for wheels that are looking for homes. Right there, at the top of the list, posted not an hour earlier, was a great wheel – free. I thought about it for oh, five seconds, and sent an email. I explained that I am a spinner who loves to restore old wheels, and that I would very much like to give this wheel a home where it can come back to productive life. Then I paced anxiously, hoping for a response. It did occur to me how silly it was to go from thinking “nah, I don’t need a great wheel” to feeling like this one just NEEDED to come home with me!

Within a couple of hours, the lady got back to me. She liked the sound of my email, and thought the wheel did indeed belong at my house. How marvellous! We emailed back and forth a bit, and I learned that the wheel had belonged to her mother, Shirley, who did not spin but loved antiques. Apparently she spent quite a bit of time finding “just the right wheel”, and it was of her treasured possessions (not stored in a barn, like so many other great wheels!). Seven years ago this Friday, Shirley died suddenly of a heart attack while on vacation, and since then, this beautiful wheel has lived in her daughter’s basement. With basement renovations coming to make room for a growing family, the wheel had to go … so she posted it, and I responded. When I picked up the wheel today, i found adorable children and a happy household. I’m honoured to be chosen to carry the story of Shirley’s wheel forward into the future.

There’s a wee bit of work to do on the wheel, but not much. It does need a proper spindle – apparently there’s one somewhere in the basement and it may turn up as renovation preparations continue. I have a temporary one in place for now (made of a knitting needle, a wine cork and a rubber band) – enough to spin a sample of yarn and see that the wheel holds a drive band and will happily spin!

Someone described great wheels as the ‘matriarchs of wheels’. After seeing Shirley’s lovely grandchildren today, I think this wheel should be named “Grandma Shirley”  … in honour of her previous owner, and her status as matriarch of wheels.

I like to think that the real Grandma Shirley would be pleased. Her daughter seemed to think she would be.

Listen.

When chest pain wakes you out of a sound sleep and won’t go away … listen.

When your blood pressure goes up to 144/100, but only intermittently … listen.

When the doctors say ‘your heart is fine, your lungs are fine, your chest wall is fine … follow up with your GP” … listen.

When your GP says ‘perhaps it is stress that you aren’t consciously aware of’ … listen.

I didn’t want to listen. I know what stress is, thank you very much. I’ve had two round trip tickets to Hell and lived to tell the tale – I know stress really, really well, and this ain’t it. My life is better now than it has ever been! How could I be suffering so much stress now that I’d be in pain, unable to sleep, and feeling like my head’s about to explode … when I managed just fine when things really were crazy?

It just made no sense.

But my body would not be quiet. The pain got worse.

Listen, my body said. Listen to me. It’s time.

Time for what?

Time to finish the old work.

I’m too busy. Go away.

You are not too busy, and I am not going away. Listen.

I have things to do. Can’t this wait?

It’s waited long enough.

:sigh:

And so I booked myself off of work and sat down to hear what my body was trying to tell me.

Some days I feel like I’ve already lived two lifetimes. My first child died the day she was born (Valentine’s Day, 1995) from a severe neural tube defect. The pain of that loss changed my life completely – that’s when I really started to wake up and take a look at what it is to truly live, to be in the present moment, to really make the most of the time we are given. That was the first trip to Hell. Nothing in my whole life has ever hurt as much as saying goodbye to my baby – it felt like someone reached into my chest and tore out my still-beating heart. I got so tired of crying and hurting and missing her, it was exhausting and sad and unfair and it hurt.

The Boy was born a year later, and things got better. His smiling face healed many of my sorrows – though the pain of my daughter’s death did not fully ease for several years, and once in awhile it still catches me off guard. Rarely now, though. She’d have been 16 this year. I do wonder what she’d have looked like at sixteen. She had dark hair and dusky skin and a round face, and she was beautiful to me, even in death.

Just before the turn of the millennium, my marriage started to fall apart. My husband, The Engineer, who had always been a fairly even tempered kind of guy, suddenly became insanely jealous and controlling. I tried everything I could think of to mollify him and keep him happy – I gave up my friends, I stopped going to the gym, I kept my opinions to myself … and I slowly died inside. We went to counselling: it didn’t seem to make any difference. Eventually I moved out in a last-ditch effort to save the marriage: perhaps, if we started ‘dating’ each other again, and weren’t faced with the multitude of challenges of living in the same space every day, we could put things back together. For the sake of The Boy, too, we had to find a way to live peacefully – even if that meant living in two households.

It wasn’t until I was in my own condo with the door safely locked behind me that I realized I’d spent months huddled on the very edge of the bed, unable to relax, even in sleep. I was so afraid of him, yet he said he loved me, he never hit me, and I could not articulate the source of my fear. All I knew was that if I was meeting him for the first time, now, I wouldn’t have had anything to do with him. In five short years he had gone from the love of my life to a total stranger, and I had no idea how this had happened.

Just before Thanksgiving he was admitted for what they assumed was a nervous breakdown of some kind. I wasn’t there – friends of his took him in after he started acting strangely during dinner at their house, and I was asked to stay away lest my presence make things worse. The next day I got a phone call at work: it was the neurologist who’d examined him, and she had bad news. “He has a brain tumour,” she said, “and he is refusing to let us contact his parents.”

And the conductor shouted “All aboard for Hell!”, the train whistle blew, and I was dragged on board again.

Thus began the worst years of my life. The tumour was located in the part of the brain that governs personality, which of course explained why he had changed so drastically from the person I had known. This also meant that for the rest of his life, I had to deal with a complete stranger whose brain was scrambled in a way that made him utterly self-centered and with no trace of empathy for anyone … not even his own child.

I probably could’ve found a way to work with that stranger, though it would not have been easy. I did try though - when we realized what was going on, I moved back home to care for him. I took my vows seriously: in sickness and in health. I leased out my condo, quit my job and borrowed money from the bank and from friends to buy him all the fancy toys he wanted for his ‘last go’ – including a Lexus SUV. We lived in Fort McMurray and he was employed by one of the big oil companies there … I knew that his disability pay would cover our living expenses, and that when the inevitable occurred, life insurance would pay the bills for his toys. We’d be fine.

A month later, his parents stepped in and reclaimed their son with the ferocity of a pack of wolves fighting a stranger off their territory. I was to blame for his illness – I was a bad wife, I stressed him out, and stress causes cancer. I know they were hurting parents who needed someone to blame and I was the convenient target but oh, the drama that ensued.

I was kicked out of the house: he had a friend convey his “need” to have the house to himself, and didn’t blink when I said if I was leaving, The Boy was coming with me. He wasn’t allowed to drive and didn’t want the Lexus anymore, so I should just keep it – though I couldn’t possibly afford the payments for it, nor the fuel to drive it. I was unemployed, and having been a contractor I had no EI, and I was faced with the costs of setting up my own household again.

In less than two weeks, I found a job in Edmonton for half the pay I’d been making as a contractor up north. I rented an apartment and moved my own things out of our house – the spare bed (which I’d had as a girl), my son’s things, the every day dishes and cutlery, a few pots and some Corningware, a fold out couch I’d had in university and the old table from out on the deck. I left all the ‘good things’ behind without a backward look, blessed the salesman who gave me a good trade on the Lexus for a 4Runner, found a daycare for The Boy, and went to work.

The next two years were one crisis after another. I was served with court papers demanding regular visitation and I offered generous terms (every Saturday and every other weekend from Saturday morning until Sunday night) and was granted my request that all visits be supervised, in light of the medical issues at play. As The Engineer was effectively living with his parents, this wasn’t really a big issue, though it was perceived as a grave insult.

See, The Engineer and his family chose denial as their coping strategy, and I chose to face the truth. He was fine! How dare I suggest otherwise! Then they found out that I also chose to tell The Boy the truth as I understood it: I showed him the scans and the huge mass in Daddy’s skull. Even a child could identify it as ‘wrong’. I told him that the doctors would try hard to fix it, but this kind of tumour isn’t the kind they are able to fix. Nobody knows when, but probably before you are big, Daddy will die. He accepted this calmly, as most children do. They can handle the truth – it’s the lies they can’t accept.

I refuse to lie to my child. However, his grandparents were appalled by my candour and told him I was wrong. There’s no tumour, it went away! He didn’t believe them, but was confused by their strange pronouncements: a kid who is in the middle of potty training recognizes both a commode chair and waterproof pads … so why was Grandpa telling him that the commode chair was just a garbage can and the waterproof pads were just to keep Daddy from slipping in his seat? Every week I spent the drive home from their house trying first to follow my child’s convoluted narratives to figure out what he was talking about, then reframing things for him so that he would still be able to love his father and not be crushed by his grandparents’ lies.

At Christmas time, for several days they told The Boy that Daddy couldn’t come to the phone because he’d lost his voice. They never mentioned that they wouldn’t be at the school Christmas concert, they just didn’t show up: when we called, they said they didn’t come because it was raining. After a week of the stories not making sense, we finally realized that The Engineer was in the hospital – but he refused to see The Boy. I don’t suppose I will ever know why. I was just the enemy and had to be kept in the dark at all costs.

Eventually, the tumour made it’s last charge: The Boy told me that Daddy was now in a bed in the living room and not talking to him. I explained that it wasn’t because he didn’t want to talk, it was because he couldn’t. The next weekend, on our way there, The Boy quietly said from the back seat, “Mom, do you think my dad will talk to me this time?” I told him, sadly, that he probably wouldn’t be able to. A few minutes later that same quiet voice said, “But it’s okay to hope, right?” It was all I could do to see the road through my tears.

Daddy didn’t talk to him that day, and before The Boy’s next visit, I got a phone call at work. It was “a message for The Boy”, he said, “Tell him that his Dad died this morning.” That was it. The Boy wasn’t allowed to go say goodbye, his father was cremated, and I was told that we were not welcome to sit with the family at the funeral – I should stand at the back of the church. I didn’t … I sat at the side with my own friends and family, and during the Sign of Peace I carried my little boy over to shake hands and offer peace to those who had treated us so badly for so long. The priest had to wait for us to get back to our seats before he could resume the service. It was a small victory, in the heaping coals of flame on their heads kind of way.

Then my child support payments stopped, and I was told that nothing could be done until the will was probated (this is patently untrue, but I had no money to pay a lawyer to get it sorted out). The Boy asked for some of his toys and a few mementos of his father, and we were ignored. Eventually, a few things showed up on our doorstep, but it was all so difficult, we just gave up and did without.

When the will was sorted out, a year later, the back support was paid up and regular payments resumed, but that year had been long. When I was finally able to get the value of The Boy’s actual inheritance (and this took me more than a year and the intervention of a lawyer), there was so little there I was shocked. The generous life insurance was not left to him. All the costs for two funerals were taken out of the estate (i.e. The Boy’s inheritance), not paid for by the insurance money (wherever it went) nor from the bank account that had been made joint with The Engineer’s father for convenience during his illness. So much disappeared … and all I could think was that The Engineer could not possibly have intended for things to end up this way. But, by the time the decisions were being made, he was not himself anymore, and his parents’ hatred guided the decisions that were made. Apparently it didn’t occur to anyone that if the household the supposedly-beloved-grandchild lives in is short of money, the grandchild suffers too, and that sending a card that says “we love you so much” with a Lego set a couple of times a year doesn’t really make up for the hurt that has been done nor the lies that have been told.

Eventually the drama quieted down, though it never really did get resolved. The original child support order is not legally enforceable, because it has The Engineer’s name on it: we need a judge to scribble “The Estate of” in front of his name and put a new stamp on it and then it’ll be legal again, but I’ve been unable to get this done in the five years I’ve been trying. The last time we tried, we got a year and a half worth of post dated support cheques instead … which was fine, except that the year and a half ended in January 2011 and there aren’t any more cheques and none seem to be forthcoming. So once again, I’m paying a lawyer to try to enforce my son’s father’s wishes, because the “loving grandparents” are too angry to see that hurting me hurts The Boy.

And so here I sit, with my chest tight and my head aching, off work for however long it takes to get all of this sorted out in my head and to get my body’s alarm system reset to a lower threshold. My counsellor describes it as Delayed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and that rings true.

I’m trying to help my body let go of the tension and fear: it’s safe now, but I’ve run at high throttle for so long it’s a lot of work getting my body to reset. This will take some time and a lot of concerted effort.

I’m also trying to find the path to forgiveness, but it is a difficult road. I’m still really angry at the injustice of it all, and I long for things to be made right. I can’t change the situation, though, so I have to change my outlook. It’s not easy, but I’m working on it. It’s the only road to peace.

So why write this? Why go through all of the old stories again, feeling the hurt and pain anew?

Because I am a Scribe, it is part of who I am. Tell the story and heal your past. By listening to me here, you help me heal. Thank you for your courage: my stories are hard to hear, and I know it. They’re hard to tell, too.

May we all find the path of forgiveness and peace.
-----------

It's now 2017: I have, indeed, found the path of forgiveness and peace: I even wrote a book about it.
My body has been permanently changed by the trauma I survived, and my PTSD is chronic and complex. However, my soul is at peace, and I am content.

The first graduate of the Apple Jack Creek Home for Aged and Wayward Wheels

The Apple Jack Creek Home for Aged and Wayward Spinning Wheels is proud to announce the first graduate from our unique program!
This wheel arrived here tired, dusty, and dry. After her creation sometime in the 1930’s in the northern Czech Republic, at some point she travelled to Canada, where she recently spent some years languishing in a cold garage attic. At long last, the decision was made that she was ready to take the plunge and re-enter polite spinning society! Finding her way here was, of course, the first step on that journey and we are so proud of her. (Everyone clap politely, now!)
Just to show you how far she’s come, here is what she looked like on arrival (she’s the one on the far left)…

During her stay, she was bathed liberally in tung oil finish and wow, did that ever make a difference! Here she is, partway through her treatment at the spa:

Look at that youthful glow!
This girl had a unique feature that called for some new techniques in our spa – she’s got a metal flyer, which is not something you see every day. Our local resources (thanks Dad) suggested brass and carbon steel brushes for the Dremel and they did indeed do a fabulous job of polishing: under all the grime, that lovely flyer has a brass neck and steel arms … and she longer sports any twisted flax fibres or caked on grease. Detoxification is just another part of the spa experience at Apple Jack Creek!
Some fine tuning work was needed on the bobbin and the whorl, where the real work of spinning happens. The bobbin clattered on the flyer rod, especially once all the gunk was removed, so new leather bearings were inserted into the ends to cushion the spinning wood against the metal. The flyer whorl is a pressure-fit (rather than a threaded twist-on), and was, in fact, fitted to a clump of flax thread and built up grease that had been purposely created around the end of the flyer rod. With that cleaned off, a new method of fixing the whorl in place was needed, so more leather was called into service. The whorl was never properly centered, so in the course of fixing the pressure fit, it was shifted somewhat more towards the middle, though it’s still not quite perfect. Well, none of us are perfect in this life, eh folks?
And now … after all that hard work, here she is. Isn’t she beautiful, folks?

Now let the ladies and gentlemen see what you were able to accomplish this afternoon....

Isn’t that great folks? Look at her, she’s ready to be productive once more! What a girl! Applause! Applause!
Here she is, showing you what she can do.

Any spinners out there looking for a productive member of the family? The Apple Jack Creek Home for Aged and Wayward Spinning Wheels asks potential adopters to contact us: we do request a donation of $250 to cover our program expenses, and we ask that you be committed to furthering this wheel’s re-entry into productive spinning society. To facilitate this process, we are pleased to offer a 3-bobbin Lazy Fred (stained to match) for just $25 to those spinners who do not already have a one-bobbin solution in place.
Local(ish) pickup or delivery to Olds (during Fibre Week) is free. Shipping can be arranged, but as this wheel doesn’t disassemble, it is likely to be a bit challenging.

Spring must be around the corner!

We have lambs! The two ‘early ewes’ (the Columbia and Columbia/Hamp cross) had their lambs this week … of course after several days of lovely weather, when it dropped to –31, they decided to have their babies. :)

We were anticipating just such an event, though, and were ready to warm up the babies and get their mamas into the barn for warmth and peace and quiet.

This morning, The Boy saw this out the window:

Love, sunshine, and peace.

Projects

I have, to my surprise, discovered that restoring antique wheels is a remarkably satisfying and engaging activity. It’s a hobby that probably borders on obsession/addiction, but hey, I’m okay with that.

I regularly surf the local Kijiji for wheels that might need some restoration or the attention of a spinner/fixerupperperson and this past week I found an ad for an interesting European wheel. I emailed the seller and discovered that they had THREE wheels for sale – one complete, one with the flyer but no bobbin, and one with neither.

I am now the long-distance-almost-owner of ...

• an intact wheel with a really neat metal flyer that has slits-and-holes for the yarn, instead of hooks:

• a really neat 'sideways' wheel – the spinner sits facing the edge of the wheel, rather than the hub, and the yarn makes a sharp ‘right hand turn’ into the flyer assembly:

• another sideways wheel in need of a full flyer/bobbin assembly and a maiden repair:

I can’t wait to see how these wheels clean up and to get them back into spinning condition. Once they are restored, I hope to put them in the hands of spinners who will be part of ensuring that they have ‘another century of productive life’.

Treading in ancient footsteps

Tonight, the Small People were admiring the wheels in the living room (there are quite a few at the moment…) and ended up over by the wee little Lithuanian wheel. They asked about the distaff (“you put the wool on this board and stick it in place with the poky thing, then you spin from there”) and turned the wheel to see the flyer go around. We looked at the double drive band, and saw that the string is tighter around the bobbin whorl than the flyer whorl, and so the bobbin and flyer turn at different speeds for each turn of the drive wheel. I twisted the bobbin, and Dinosaur Boy turned the flyer and we admired how the two pieces work independently of one another but cooperate to make yarn.

Then I helped them place their tiny feet on the treadle and said “Feel that? There were people spinning on this wheel a hundred years ago and their feet wore down that wood, right where your foot is now, treadling over and over to make yarn for their families.”

Before she went to bed tonight, the little Princess Girl asked if tomorrow I would teach them more about the spinning wheels.

Of course I will. :)

Valerija – the Lithuanian Wheel

Meet Valerija (va-LAIR-ee-ya), my new-to-me Lithuanian wheel.

She is named for the lady who lived next door to my sister, in Lituania – every time I looked at this wheel, I couldn’t help but be reminded of this lady that I have heard so many stories about. My sister says she would think it quite funny to have a wheel named for her. :)

I acquired this wheel through Ravelry, in trade for Bridgit, my Ashford Traveller. Much as I loved the Traveller, after spinning on Jacqueline the Canadian Production Wheel for awhile, I knew I’d fallen hard for the antique wheels, and the Traveller just wasn’t going to see much use at this house. It’s a shame for a wheel to sit unused, and as it turned out, a lady in Calgary who teaches spinning had this old wheel, purchased from an antique dealer, and it needed just a little more work. As her spinning students often need to use wheels borrowed from the instructor, an Ashford was of more use to her – and the antique was of more use to me. With the help of my sister and brother in law in Calgary, and a friend from town who went down to Calgary on a trip (to pick up her own Canadian Production Wheel, actually) the trade was arranged, and this little wheel made it to my house.

One of the great things about the Lithuanian wheels is that they break down into pieces for transport: the story goes that the women would knock down their wheel, stuff it into a sack, and go to a friend’s house to spin for the day … then repeat the process in reverse on the way home! This wheel had been glued together by the antique dealer (gasp) but most of that had been resolved before she came to me. I got a box of parts that looked like this:

It didn’t take long to figure out how they all went together, though, and with a piece of leather shoelace to tie the footman in place and to replace the wooden loop that went over the drive crank, we were in business. The paddle thing that sticks up at the top is called a distaff, and holds the fibre you are spinning. This wheel probably spun mostly flax, but it also works for wool.

If you look closely at the treadle, you can see where the wood has been worn down by the feet of spinners before me.

As soon as I sat at the wheel, my foot settled into exactly the same groove. You can’t begin to imagine how cool that feels.

This is why I love the old wheels. With just a bit of love, oil, and a new piece or two they come back to life, humming along as they fill their bobbins with yarn.

I like knowing that one of the things I’ll leave behind me are these wheels – useful tools, well made and carefully maintained. I’m not the craftsman, just the custodian … but still.

Another century of life.