The Girls

Viveca (smallest, foreground) is a 2016 model Merlin Tree Roadbug direct drive wheel with a detachable left treadle for portability. (Many spinners are split in the Roadbug camp: I am firmly in the “Love it” category.)

Middle ground is Sarah, a Benjamin Peirce Saxony style Flax Wheel. She was purchased from a local yarn shop in Saint Charles, Missouri in their “Going Out of Business” sale as a display piece, but she is in nearly flawless condition (only had to replace the leathers) and is an incredible workhorse. She was produced somewhere between 1840 and 1850, and she has several surviving sisters sprinkled throughout the states.

Myfanwy is the largest wheel (background): a Maidenheaded Wool Wheel dating somewhere between 1890 and 1910. However, she is more or less un-datable due to her unfortunate status as a “Frankenwheel:” a wheel cobbled together from bits and pieces of leftover and remade parts as more and more original pieces of her broke. She is by far in the worst condition: the wheel is warped and held in place on its axel by cut up beer cans and bobby pins, her spindle is held on with cardboard from a box of wine, and hair ties, rubber bands, and leather strips hold the rest of her together. She only works when a room’s exact temperature and ambient humidity is at a certain level (and what exactly that is is hard to guess on any given day). She was purchased from an Rose Ridge Antiques in Brockton, Illinois in 2016.

Spinning Process

Here are a few videos on each of the wheels, showing the different looks for each process. While the process and technique is more or less the same, each of the three wheels has a different technical setup: Myfanwy, as a walking wheel, is entirely hand powered; Sarah is run by a single treadle, and Viveca by two.