“Was that for little girls to spin yarn on when their mothers spun on the big wheel?” she asked.
“No,” was the answer. “The little wheel is for spinning flax, which is different from wool. Flax is a plant that grows. It has blue flowers. In the olden days our grandmothers took the stalks of the flax plant, wet them, pounded them, and pulled the fine fibers into threads. These very fine threads were then spun together by the spindle on the small flax wheel, and from the threads linen cloth was woven at the mill.”
“If we could take the big spinning wheel and the flax wheel I could put them together and have a dandy engine!” said Ted, with sparkling eyes.
“You may take them,” said Mrs. Pitney.
With Janet’s help Ted set the two old-fashioned spinning wheels together. The larger one had a rim around it over an inch wide, and the smaller, or flax wheel, had two grooves around its rim.
“They used to put two belts of string on the small wheel,” said Mrs. Pitney, “and then the string belts ran to two different parts of the spindle,” and she showed them about it. In this way one spindle went faster than the other, for they were of different sizes.
“My daddy—he has a fan belt on his auto—but it busted!” broke out Trouble.
“Yes, I heard about that,” laughed Mrs. Pitney. “Well, now you may play with the spinning wheels,” she told Teddy.
He found some string for a belt and ran it from the large wheel to the smaller. Then when Ted turned the large wheel with his hand the flax wheel also went around, one on one side of the attic and one on the other side.
“We’ll play steamboat,” decided Ted. “I’ll be the engineer.”