Tuesday 13 March 2012

Wool Whorl

A hawk-eyed friend found this today in the vegetable patch:




Whorl, possibly?

Reverse of possible whorl
It may be a piece of Lamprophyre, an igneous rock formed in volcanic dykes, suggests Catalina at IES Jaume Balmes in Barcelona.


It is possibly a whorl ('fusaiola' in Catalan), used at the end of a stick to spin wool. If it is, then it could mean (there are a lot of conditional ifs in this sentence...) that people may have been spinning wool here a long time ago.


Which would make sense. Quim the shepherd talks about his grandfather leading his sheep around the area when transhumance was still practised, with a wee shepherd's bothy up on the Pla de la Calma above us that was used in the summer time, and winter pastures closer to home. 


I like these links with history. My grandmother's family kept sheep on a big border farm, Kirkton, now a lovely bed and breakfast. While she was playing in the Kirkton Burn in the first years of the 20th century (she was born on 16th March 1899) there was, perhaps, another wee girl here in Catalunya, sitting by the stream, spinning wool with a whorl.

1 comment:

Fot-li foc!!! said...

Ja sabem on anar de vacances aquest any!!! si dic que soc el veterinari vostre potser em fan descompte i tot, però si tenen animals és possible que també em facin treballar...