Lucy Myers, left, of Deerfield, New Hampshire, shows John and Linda Parker of Clinton, Massachusetts, how she makes yarn using her spinning wheel on Thursday at the Fryeburg Fair.
FRYEBURG — Since the start of this year’s Fryeburg Fair, Lucy Myers, a former sheep farmer from Deerfield, New Hampshire, has sat just outside the barn where people house their sheep and lambs, spinning her castle wheel to make yarn.
Myers explained Thursday – the fifth day of this year’s fair – that castle wheels, or “travelers,” are used to spin yarn out of natural fibers. For the last two years she has been spinning yarn in front of the sheep show barn at the fair using old wool from sheep she used to farm in New Hampshire.
“I don’t have a farm anymore, because I have trouble walking around, but I used to have one with a lot of sheep in Deerfield,” Myers said. “The other day, a professor from the University of New Hampshire asked me if I still had them, and when I told him no, he said ‘It’s a shame, because they were beauties.'”
“That made me feel good,” Myers said, smiling.
The wheel Myers was using to spin yarn came from New Zealand and was made by a business called the Ashford Handicrafts.
“It’s about 35 years old,” Myers said. “I had an opportunity back then to go to New Zealand, and when I got there, they were all impressed by the old lady from America coming and taking an interest in spinning wheels.”
She said the art of using a spinning wheel is an acquired taste, and that it takes a long time to do.
“I’ve been working on the same spool for two days, and you need two spools to ply together to make yarn, so it takes awhile,” Myers said.
People periodically stopped in front of Myers on Thursday, and those who showed interest in her actions would receive a brief explanation of the spinning wheel and how long it has been used throughout history.
“I had a friend who told me recently that the Fryeburg Fair is the best in the United States, and he would know, because he’s judged so many cattle shows across the country,” Myers said. “Before last year, I hadn’t been for three or four years, and when I came back, a lot of people still recognized me. People are so nice here.”
On the other end of the fair, near the main entrance, three men from Southern Maine performed jazz music as the Moose Mountain Jazz Trio.
Mel Tukey of Portland, who plays the cornet, said that he, banjo player Jeff Grosser of Wiscasset and tuba player Eric Anderson of Cumberland Center have been performing together for most of their lives.
“We come to the Fryeburg Fair and play every year,” Tukey said. “It’s great, because it’s a huge fair and it’s a multi-state fair. Other fairs are smaller and they don’t draw the same variety of people. Here, you get people from Vermont, Massachusetts or Canada. This is the one.”
Eric Grosser of Wiscasset, left, Mel Tukey of Portland, center, and Eric Anderson of Cumberland Center perform songs Thursday afternoon at the Fryeburg Fair as the Moose Mountain Jazz Trio.
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