My New Baby

I've been scouring Craig's List and Freecycle and the newspaper classifieds for a new(er) wheel than the one I have. Don't get me wrong. I love Eloise, my 18th century Eastern European flax wheel, but she is fragile and needs a little attention. So earlier this week I found an add on Craig's List about an estate sale which listed all kinds of miscellaneous household furnishings and then a light from the heavens showed down on the listing and tacked on the end of "... dishes, linens, two sofas, antique chair" were the words and a spinning wheel. It was hanging there like an afterthought. I immediately contacted the person and asked if they were willing to let me come out and look at it and what kind of condition the wheel was in. She wrote back and said, "Sure, come on Thursday evening. It's in working condition and I'm wanting $100 for it."

Now, being the skeptic I am, I immediately questioned what "working condition" could mean, but decided that I would go look anyway. I mean it might be a good wheel or it might be a nice display piece, but the address was only ten minutes from my house and I could always luck out. Well, I lucked out. It's a beautiful fairly modern Saxony Canadian production wheel. She's in perfect working order (and I even have spun a few yards on her already).

Her name is Elora. I asked the owner if she had a name yet and I was met with confusion. She said, "Well, my students (elementary age) called her Sleeping Beauty." I laughed and said, "But she isn't a flax wheel." That got me a confused look. I then had to explain that Sleeping Beauty pricked her finger on a distaff of a flax wheel and not a wool spinning wheel. (That got me a bag of New Zealand wool thrown in.) But I didn't want to call her Sleeping Beauty and I didn't want to call her Aurora, so I combined it with the previous owner's name (Laura) to come up with Elora.

I'm so happy.