Spinning wool yarn is a major part of the preparatory process for weaving. Producing thin yarn was a painstaking, time-consuming task that required plenty of patience. Three tools were mostly used during spinning: a distaff, a spindle, and a whorl. The yarn was then wound into a skein using a spool. Yarn spinning was something that women could do during the day while engaged in other activities, unlike weaving which required sitting at the loom.
A spindle and a spool were among the objects brought to Greece by a refugee family from Sinasos and are now exhibited in the small museum of the ‘Nea Sinasos’ Association after being donated by the family’s descendants. In the photo album Sinasos of Cappadocia, there is a photograph of a woman from Sinasos spinning yarn captioned: ‘our mothers spinning wool yarn to make socks for us to wear in the foreign lands’, highlighting the importance of the task in women’s everyday lives as well as their grief at what was to come.
