Three very loud cheers for Mrs Hartford

I had a newcomer in my AH class today.

"Have you spun before?" says I.

"Not really" replies she. "I did learn years ago when I was ten years old, but I haven't since then."

This was a young woman, I really wouldn't like to guess her age but she has children at junior school or even younger. Having some belief in the riding a bicycle theory of non-forgettery, I bypassed the spindle and sat her at the class wheel. She set to treadling impeccably. During the course of the day, she whipped through short draw, spinning from the fold, point of contact, plying from the lazy kate and also from a centre pull ball. We had a side trip in to carding, but not hugely successfully as she had fleece that also gave me another object lesson for the group, bright yellow with canary stain as it was, hideously short stapled and with a nasty break in it. She dabbled with the alpaca that the rest were enjoying, but not in the least surprisingly, was a little daunted. She - and I - had a great time.

Towards the end of the day, I asked her about her much earlier spinning experience. It turned out that she had been taught by a teacher at her primary school, who was passionate about crafts. This same woman - Mrs Hartford - had also taught her to cook. I just felt - well, pleased. Those of us who sometimes demonstrate to or actually teach young children the rudiments of spinning often say to one another that we know full well that they will most likely not go on with it for long, but the hope is that one day, just maybe, they will remember that early pleasure and seek out the opportunity to take it up again. And here was somebody doing just that. Sometimes it really does come back both buttered and jammed.

Of course, there has to be a little rain as well....I have another not-so-newcomer, who has been struggling, and today I finally twigged that her struggles were in large part caused by her wheel. I had thought I had got it set up for her, but I had not realised - and she had not told me - that after a very short spell of treadling, the whole thing would just stop functioning, the yarn would simply not draw in. I spent ages on it, sorted out some of the problems, but not that big one. My great difficulty is that her wheel is a Keneila, and I have absolutely no experience of them, and they do have a somewhat different tensioning and flyer set-up.

So if anyone speaks Keneila fluently.........