Spinning

Spinning, San Juan de la Rambla, 1887 At 2.10 we reach La Guancha, a small hamlet of no particular interest, and thirty minutes more find us with our faces turned once more towards Puerto, clattering over the paved street of San Juan de la Rambla, the quiet, sedate little village which we had already passed through upon our way to Chasna. We draw rein at the same venta at which we had previously halted, and again appreciate the famous malmsey wine of this place.

One of the daughters of the house was spinning. Under her left arm she held the rueca, a piece of cane about three feet long, the end of which for ten inches is split into four or five pieces, where is placed the rough flax, and in the right hand she held, between thumb and first finger, the tip of the spindle (huso), a piece of heavy wood, spindle-shaped, and with a projecting rim round the bottom. This she kept twirling round, and the thread, guided thereto but the fingers of the left hand, was wound round the body of the instrument. Seeing that I was interested in the process, she took us into an adjacent shed, and showed us a weaving machine of the rudest construction, evidently entirely homemade. Here the thread she had just spun was being made up into cloth about thirty inches wide for trousers and other garments. The colour was not quite that of what is called brown holland, but a faint grey, obtained by dipping the thread in a weak solution of ordinary ink. The peasants about here sell this rough linen at about nine pence a yard.

Olivia Stone, Tenerife and its six satellites (1887)