Thus we see that in New England the culture, spinning and weaving of wool, as well as flax, was as religiously encouraged as in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and New York. The great wool-wheel was as necessary an implement in every household as the little flax-wheel, for every home had by law to contain one spinner. Children of all classes were required to learn to spin wool, and met on equal footing over their work. Homespun became so universal a commodity that imported woolens were not missed when the time came to forbid them the country. It was a process of many months of hard labor to convert the raw fleece into the “all-wool goods a yard wide” which we cut up so recklessly to-day. Another old saying, “dyed in the wool,” represents another laborious process, that of dyeing the wool with homemade dyes. All kinds of homely flowers were used for these dyes, a beautiful green being made from goldenrod mixed with indigo. Blue, made from the blue paper that wrapped the old sugar-loaf, and from indigo bought from travelling pedlers, was the favorite color, possibly because the easiest to obtain; and the old blue dye-pot stood constantly in the chimney corner like the Frenchwoman’s _pot-au-feu_. We cannot help wondering if the coats of the “Homespuns” were blue. And the familiar blue of the patriot army? Was that also women’s work? After the dyeing came the carding, a very deft process, and also a very dirty one, for the wool had first to be rubbed with melted swine’s grease—three pounds of grease to ten of wool. This process corresponded in purpose and method to the hetcheling of flax, as the wool was drawn into parallel fibres through bent wire teeth set in a leather or wooden rectangle, called a wool-card. Here are the wool-cards of Maria Tallmadge, second wife of Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge, the famous major of Connecticut’s Second Light Dragoons, the friend of Lafayette and confidant of Washington; they belong to the valuable collection of the Litchfield Historical Society. By these clumsy-looking implements the wool was twisted into little rolls, and was then ready for spinning. [Illustration: CARDS] This wool-spinning called for the most alert and graceful series of movements, to which our foremothers owe in large part their poise and dignity of carriage. The little roll of wool was placed on the spindle, the great wheel was given a quick turn, and the spinner stepped quickly backward three or four steps, holding the twisting yarn in her left hand high above her head: then with a quick forward movement she let it wind around the bobbin, and the process was repeated. An active spinner could spin six skeins a day, and to do this it is estimated that she walked with her backward and forward steps over twenty miles. Yarn was wound from the spindle on clock-reels, and also on hand-reels called “niddy-noddies.” To be knitted it had also to be washed and cleaned.