Mother wove her linen, her rag carpets, and her woollen goods. I have
"quilled" for her many a time--that is, run the yarn off the reel into
spools for use in the shuttle.

Father had a flock of sheep which yielded wool enough for our stockings,
mittens, comforts, and underwear, and woollen sheets and comforts for
the beds. I have some of those home-made woollen sheets and bed covers
now at Slabsides.

Before the sheep were sheared in June they were driven two miles to the
creek to be washed. Washing-sheep-day was an event on the farm. It was
no small task to get the sheep off the mountain, drive them to the deep
pool behind old Jonas More's grist mill, pen them up there, and drag
them one by one into the water and make good clean Baptists of them! But
sheep are no fighters, they struggle for a moment and then passively
submit to the baptism. My older brothers usually did the washing and I
the herding. When the shearing was done, a few days later the poor
creatures were put through another ordeal, to which after a brief
struggle they quickly resigned themselves. Father did the shearing,
while I at times held the animal's legs. Father was not an adept hand
with the shears and the poor beast usually had to part with many a bit
of her hide along with her fleece. It used to make me wince as much as
it did the sheep to see the crests of those little wrinkles in her skin
clipped off.

I used to wonder how the sheep knew one another and how the lambs knew
their mothers when shorn of their fleeces. But they did. The wool was
soon sent to the fulling mill and made into rolls, though I have seen it
carded and made into rolls at home by hand. How many bundles of rolls
tied up into sheets I have seen come home! Then in the long summer