OLD HOMESTEAD 



and colored at the fulling mill, made a nice article for the "best 

 clothes " of the men. 



There were three spinning wheels and plenty of girls to run 

 them, and the yarn for a forty-yard piece was quickly spun. 

 Mother had learned to spin when so small that she required a 

 wide, low bench to bring her up high enough to turn the big 

 wheel, and our oldest sister, Irene, began in the same manner. 

 Mother was an expert spinner and weaver, and all her girls were 

 well taught in that line, and when they left home each had a 

 nice lot of home-made goods of her own manufacture. Some of 

 them had the conceit to believe they could weave as well and 

 more fancy patterns than their teacher. 



At sister Parnee's, in Wisconsin, I once slept in a nice 

 chamber room covered with a yarn carpet which she had made 

 with her own hands fifty years before. The colors were unfaded 

 and the texture unbroken, although used daily for half a century. 



The loom, with its various implements, had the right of way 

 all over the house, and, if the work and circumstances required, 

 was as apt to be found in the parlor as elsewhere. There were 

 big wheels, fine wheels, little wheels, flax wheels, and a quill- 

 wheel; reels, warping bars, scarns, spool-racks, harnesses and 

 pattern drafts — all supposed to be found and kept in the 

 chamber over the woodshed, but in fact traveling around the 

 house according to the pleasure of those who used them. 



There was no excuse for any one to be idle, as this was a 

 work that could be taken up and dropped at any time. All the 

 cloth required for the plain and much of the finer clothing of the 

 large family, the hired help, and frequently some for neighbors 

 and others not having the tools or knowledge to make their own, 

 was thus made with little cost except the labor. 



Dyeing and coloring was an important branch of the cloth- 



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