spindle might be placed a spool or broach which
twisted with the revolving spindle, and held the new-spun yarn. This
broach was usually simply a stiff roll of paper, a corn-cob, or a roll
of corn-husk. When the ball of yarn was as large as the broach would
hold, the spinner placed wooden pegs in certain holes in the spokes of
her spinning-wheel and tied the end of the yarn to one peg. Then she
took off the belt of her wheel and whirred the big wheel swiftly round,
thus winding the yarn on the pegs into hanks or clews two yards in
circumference, which were afterwards tied with a loop of yarn into knots
of forty threads; while seven of these knots made a skein. The
clock-reel was used for winding yarn, also a triple reel.

The yarn might be wound from the spindle into skeins in another way,--by
using a hand-reel, an implement which really did exist in every
farmhouse, though the dictionaries are ignorant of it, as they are of
its universal folk-name, niddy-noddy. This is fortunately preserved in
an every-day domestic riddle:--

"Niddy-noddy, niddy-noddy,
Two heads and one body."

The three pieces of these niddy-noddys were set together at curious
angles, and are here shown rather than described in words. Holding the
reel in the left hand by seizing the central "body" or rod, the yarn was
wound from end to end of the reel, by an odd, waving, wobbling motion,
into knots and skeins of the same size as by the first process
described. One of these niddy-noddys was owned by Nabby Marshall of
Deerfield, who lived to be one hundred and four years old. The other
was brought from Ireland in 1733 by Hugh Maxwell, father of the
Revolutionary patriot Colonel Maxwell. As it was at a time of English
prohibitions and restrictions of American manufactures, this
niddy-noddy, as an accessory and promoter of colonial wool manufacture,
was smuggled into the country.

Sometimes the woollen yarn was spun twice; especially if a close,
hard-twisted thread was desired, to be woven into a stiff, wiry cloth.
When there were two, the first spinning was called a roving. The single
spinning was usually deemed sufficient to furnish yarn for knitting,
where softness and warmth were the desired requisites.

It was the pride of a good spinster to spin the finest yarn, and one
Mistress Mary Prigge spun a pound of wool into fifty hanks of
eighty-four thousand yards; in all, nearly forty-eight miles. If the
yarn was to be knitted, it had to be w