Happy Saint Distaff Day!

I wish I could say that I timed the launch of this website perfectly to coincide with Distaff Day/Saint Distaff Day…but let’s just say that I had been working on setting up the website over the holiday period with a general plan to launch in January. By chance, I remembered that the 7th is Distaff Day (it’s now a repeating event in my calendar) and I decided that would be too good a chance to pass up launching it on the same day. So, I got to work getting the website ready and the first blog posts written!

In case you’re wondering, as many blog posts and YouTube videos will tell you, there was never a person called Saint Distaff but the day marks the end of the Christmas period and the return to work for women. It is similar to Plough Monday, which is the return to agricultural work.

I started spinning with a distaff a few years ago. I mostly spin with a spindle rather than with a spinning wheel. I’ve always just held the fibre a bit awkwardly to keep it from getting tangled up but eventually I got tired of it. Honestly, the distaff just makes so much sense! My current favourite distaff is one based on a find from the Oseberg ship burial in Norway, which is dated to the 9th century CE. I bought mine from Niddy Noddy UK on Etsy. I was worried that the handle would be awkward to hold while spinning, but I don’t have any trouble at all. In case you’re curious, the spindle is also from the same maker and is a reproduction of a whorl-less French spindle with a spiral cut groove at the tip. Both are an absolute joy to to use even though they are based on artefacts that date to very different periods!

There are no formal celebrations for Distaff Day, after all, it marks the END of a holiday period and a RETURN to work, but I think that by now the cheese has usually disappeared (in our house at least), and I’m tired of eating holiday foods and snacks, and it is actually a better time to reflect on the previous year and plan for the future. So I thought I would briefly share a few thoughts about 2024 and what I hope to do in 2025.

2024: a brief review

Honestly, this year was a bit of a mix. In terms of work, it was fantastic because I had a steady stream of jobs coming in and worked on some really amazing projects (not to mention the Corbridge Glass Project!) but I learned I need to be kinder to myself and the way I schedule work.

Looking back over my photos from 2024…wow, I’m so glad went through them because I had forgotten about quite a few of them. I’m not going to list everything I made because this post would get really long, but I am going to pick out a couple of projects that I really enjoyed (also I need to get better at taking nice pictures when I complete a project).

I joined the local branch of the Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers. I was excited to see that two of the meetings were about flax and linen. One of the meetings was a workshop on spinning flax, which was fab! Over the summer I spun up two skeins of tow linen but still have more. It is so very different from spinning wool but I enjoyed it and I was pleased with the results.
I experimented more with gathering stinging nettles and processing the stalks for fibre. This was very much a ‘just try it and see what happens’ sort of project. I still have a lot to process but it’s messy and I need to wait for it to get a little bit warmer outside so I can continue processing.
I finally started spinning some of my sheep breed wool samples! I purchased a box of 50-some raw wool samples in 2023 and washed them all that year but I wasn’t brave enough to start combing and spinning up the fibre. I made a good start in 2024 but it is still in progress. I’m proud that I made a start, as it was very daunting.
I learned how to weave on my warp weighted loom. I’ve already published part 1 on my very first attempts, and I’ll be publishing part 2 soon.

2025: looking ahead

I have a couple of projects that are either continuing from 2024 or where I’m already in the preparation stages but I’m sure more will come up as we go.

Finish spinning the wool breed samples (I could really use the storage space).
Learn how to do small band weaving with a rigid heddle.
Weave samples in wool on my warp weighted loom.
Maybe also weave some samples in linen to test that out too.
Make a set of loomweights to use on the warp weighted loom (testing phase currently in progress).

So here’s to 2025!