A Hero of the Spinning World

Our cherished heroes are not necessarily spinners who can create the loveliest yarns, or spin the fastest, or even teach the craft the best. Instead, consider the fine craftsmen who make our tools.

Sure, we can make yarn by spinning with a potato on a stick, or even just the with stick by itself. But compare that with the joy of using a well-designed, perfectly balanced, beautifully finished flyer wheel. Take, for example, Rick Reeves.

Rick, with his wife Marge, produced a prodigious 6,000 wheels—or was it 11,000? Accounts vary—before assigning rights to their much-loved Saxony wheel to Schacht Spindle Company. In this video, Jim Bateman of Yarn Barn of Kansas and I reminisce about good times with Rick while demonstrating the last walnut Saxony wheel he finished. But wait! What’s that clicking noise? Watch and find out.

—Linda

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Linda Ligon is a cofounder of Long Thread Media.