MIRASOLACE: August 2015

This week I bought an old spinning wheel at an estate sale in Great Falls, SC. It is a Saxony style wheel, made by (Jean Baptiste) Aram Paradis, who lived in St. Andre, Kamouraska, Canada from 1857 to 1925. It has a screw tensioning device, not the tilt tension that he used for his later CPW wheels (Canadian Production Wheels). It has ARAM PARADIS incised in the end of the table and some other (possibly random) marks on the top of the table. The wheel diameter is 22 inches and it has a C-shaped wheel crank. It seems to have all of its original parts, although one of the wheel uprights is cracked. I wrapped it with cord to prevent the crack from widening while I research how to get it repaired. I cleaned and waxed the wheel and installed a drive band, but it needs adjustments because whenever I treadle the band pops off. The bobbin turns but the flyer sticks. The flyer turns when I turn it manually, but not when I turn the wheel. The Antique Spinning Wheel forum and the CPW forum on ravelry.com have a lot of information about this type of wheel. I purchased the ebook "Fabricants de Rouets: Nineteenth Century Quebec Spinning Wheel Makers and their Twentieth Century Heirs 1850-1950" by Caroline Foty to learn more about the history. I can tell that this is going to be fascinating.