Once upon a time on usenet Fran Farmer wrote:
On 1/04/2015 1:04 PM, ~misfit~ wrote:
Once upon a time on usenet Fran Farmer wrote:


I hope karma treated him better than he treated your father -
htat's a really rotten act.


Yeah, *******!

LOL. Just the word that popped into my head when I read what you
wrote about the farmer the first time round.

Heh!

That wasn't quite the end of the story. Over 10 years
later I was working as a cellar hand / lab assistant / general
dogsbody at the now-defunct Viticultural Reserach Station at Te
Kauwhata. It was government run, jointly by govt. ag dept. and
science depts (both since re-named) who ran the Viticulture and
Oenological parts of the station jointly.

Well, they used to do three-month courses for both vineyard
operators and winemakers, they had a couple of houses on site that
were used as dorms. I met a nice girl from very close to where I
used to live in Nth Cant who was learning vineyard stuff for a new
vineyard / winery which was due to open the following year.

Imagine my surprise when, a few months after she'd left I got a
letter from Dads old boss saying he'd heard great things about me
from her. She was going to head up his new vineyard and would I like
the job of winemaker? I declined. Maybe Karma got him in his private
life because I hear the winery is a success.

Maybe, if he'd fallen into a vat of Malmsey.


g

Anyway, after the two years Dad moved us to the North Island, the
northern Waikato area, where he stayed until retirement. My sister
got married and had kids (in that order - just!) and she and her
husband moved their family to Australia where there was more money
to be had. After almost a couple of decades of spending all of
their money flying across the Tasman to see their grandkids twice
a year my parents also moved to Aus when Dad retired, mostly to be
closer to the grandkids. I now live just south if Auckland, a town
called Pukekohe.

On Highway 1!

Actually 7kms to the west of (but close enough ;] ). Pukekohe has
rich soil and is NZs biggest market gardening area.

I think I have a DVD that features your area on it. Must dig it out
and rewatch it.


Why not - although our dollar has climbed up a bit against yours lately.

Yup, know where that is. We are just booking accom in
NZ right now for an upcoming trip there. Would you believe my first
time there with me being in my 60s, a spinner, owning numerous
Ashford spinning wheels and cousin who lives in Levin and all those
drop dead gorgeous NZ gardens which I have read about for more
years than I care to remember. There is no excuse except perhaps
you are too close and we tend to do long haul hops much further
afield when we go O. S.

My mother used to spin wool from coloured sheep which she raised and
Dad shore. Local farmers would offer her any coloured lambs that
their ewes had. She'd spin and knit naturally coloured jumpers and a
local shop situated at a bus stop area, aimed at the tourist trade
would sell them on commision (mainly to Americans at that time).

Wow. That is a lot of work. I hope she got good money from them as
it took me a year to spin enough fleece to make my SO a greasy wool
jumper.

She'd make about one every three weeks, several hours work every evening in
the lounge watching TV (before TV became 95% pollution). The only thing she
didn't do herself was the carding, there was a small business in the closest
township where they'd do that for you on a machine for just a couple of
dollars per fleece. She used to get $125 each for them and that was
excellent money back then.

I made him one 30 years ago and when it wore out he wanted
another just like his old one.

How many coloured sheep did she end up having at any one time?

Around a dozen ranging from fawn coloured to black.

However I'm not sure if she used an
Ashford wheel or not - they're upright aren't they?

Ashford have one model that it an upright and I can never get on with
that model.

Neither could Mum. There was a local spinning club which met once a month,
taking it in turns to host. She borrowed one from another member and didn't
like it.

Asford's best known and most popular models aren't
upright. I have one of those and a newer model of theirs which is
made for ease of transport and can be carted aroudn in a zipped up
bag. I also have 2 other Kiwi wheels that haven't been made for
decades - all of them are brilliant wheels.

Mum's was a good one. She bought it as a 'flat-pack' and Dad put it
together. All dovetail and dowel joints - I don't think there was a screw in
it.

She used a 'standard'
wheel. (I learned how to shear, spin, ply and knit a bit so I'd be
prepared for the up-coming apocalypse. g)

Isn't that why we all garden? (Says she with her tongue in her cheek).

Indeed. ;-)

I really enjoy spinning - such a relaxing activity. Possibly even
better than gardening.

Do you still spin at all?

No. Mum's in Aus and I don't know anyone with a wheel. However I think I'd
pick it up again pretty quickly, muscle memory and all that.

Cheers,
--
Shaun.

"Humans will have advanced a long, long, way when religious belief has a
cozy little classification in the DSM."
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1)