Goblins, Faeries and Spinning Wheels

I just came from my Faerie Tales (NOT Fairy Tales) class and within the first half hour of class, the teacher begins lecturing on the importance of the tales being passed down maternally, as in a woman would tell tales of goblins and creatures of the night to her children in front of the fire while she sits at a spinning wheel making yarn which she will later knit or weave into clothes for her family. (I was wiggling in my chair with excitement at this point as you could probably imagine, the nearly completed Jaywalker in my purse screaming I WANT TO COME OUT NOW!) She proceeded to talk about how terms like yarn began to be associated with tall tales, as the mother would spin and yarn and tell the story at the same time. The teacher also went off on a little tangent about more similarities between knitting/weaving and the art of passing down faerie tales, the biggest one being that most people don't do these things anymore and it's much easier to buy your sweaters at Tesco and turn on a Disney movie for your children.

So after class I waited until she was finished speaking to another student and I sat down at her desk and pulled out a ball of my handspun I'm using to make a hat and my nearly finished Jaywalkers. She was thrilled! I then proceeded to tell her the story about my spinning wheel and the neighbor kids. They came over a while ago (like maybe 1 or 2 years ago) and wanted to see my room. I showed them and they both grew very quiet and said very little for the rest of the day. I wasn't entirely sure what had gotten into them. Later that day, they apparently asked their mother if I was a witch, like the one on Sleeping Beauty. Apparently they thought that all witches had spinning wheels, and normal people don't. Their mom told me that a couple days later and we both had a good laugh about it. So did my Faerie Tales teacher today.

So that's about it other than my finished Jaywalkers, named the Picadilly Circus socks. I'm quite excited about my first terribly British finished project. I think I'll make poor Tom a hat next to cover up what the Spanish girl did to his hair.