Spinning at Gayle Mill

Today I took myself "over the tops" as they say around here, from Swaledale into Wensleydale and the picturesque village of Gayle, where my destination was Gayle Mill, a 17th century cotton mill, now restored and used as a saw mill/museum/traditional craft hub (www.gaylemill.org.uk/):

My objective was to work out if I was using my drop spindle correctly at home, and Stella Adams-Schofield was running the Introduction to Spinning and Tassle Making course at Gayle Mill today (http://www.stellaadams-schofield.co.uk/), and through the morning I spun wool (merino tops of varying colours), cotton (as it was, after all, a cotton mill), and flax on a low whorl drop spindle. And yes, I had been doing it right, but Stella's demonstrations and guidance gave me invaluable insight and confidence to just get practising more. In fact, by the end of the morning Stella had me spinning consistently, pulling out the fibres as I went, rather than spinning, stopping to pull out fibres, then spinning before stopping again, as I had been doing. Lunch was provided by the Herriot Cafe in Hawes, whose sausage rolls would be worth quite a journey for, before we resumed working again through the afternoon - using our spun yarn mixed in with commercial yarn to make a tassle. Here is my result:

Tassles, I was intrigued to discover, probably date to our ancient histories as humans, and were used as, or part of, amulets for protection against evil.  It is likely that fringes date from the same practice, so the fringes we add to clothes and blankets now have that history as well - a fascinating little insight into something I had previously thought of as purely decorative. Decorative is nice, but I like things to be useful too, so that snippet of history made me much more interested in tassle making than I might have been otherwise. And a very pleasant, therapeutic activity it is too - definitely recommended as a way to use up first handspun yarn.