For those of you who don’t know, I’m an intern at the First State Heritage Park and work as a historical interpeter at the John Bell House. The first Saturday of each month we do something huge. November’s was a 18th century market fair where we took the Dover Green (a sort of city park center) back to 1750ish. I was asked and agreed to perform spindle spinning demonstrations.
After a few days of absloute chaos, I thought I owed it to y’all to tell how it went.
In a word: WONDERFULLY.
I had so much FUN! I actively recruited anybody I could convince to listen to me for two seconds to give my selection of drop spindles a try. I had two adults ask indepth questions of honest to goodness actually interested in learning to spin and I directed them as much as I could in the time I had. I had lots of people ask me what I was doing or what was that thing hanging from the string. I had almost everyone I asked give a shot all the way from 3 years old to 75 with only a couple of teases necessary. Those who didn’t want to try, I had plenty for them to touch including locks, rovings, and a couple of different spindles. Anyone who was interested got to listen to me talk about how clothes were made as if I actually was an 18th century girl.
My favorite part of the whole day was when as I was explaining all the work that went into making a piece of cloth to a little boy. His eyes just got bigger and bigger and bigger and he said and I quote “Woah.”
Yeah, “Woah”.
