Distaff: Handspinning Guide

There is a room somewhere in every spinning memory where a wheel turns slowly and never quite stops. Distaff gathers the quiet craft of handspinning into one unhurried place: the long draw of wool off a great wheel, the bright hiss of flax through a distaff, the small satisfied click of a bobbin filling. It reads like a bench-side almanac — clean light, thin rules, numbers that sit neatly on the right — and it never asks you to hurry.

Inside, a shelf of wheel histories follows the spindle from the first whorls to the treadle era, and a fiber library walks flax, wool, cotton, silk, hemp and nettle from field to finished yarn. A bookmarked glossary keeps the trade words close — rolag, grist, lazy kate — while the Treadle Cadence room paces your treadle with quiet pulses at a rhythm you choose, keeps a small ledger of your sessions, and can remind you to sit down at the wheel. Short quizzes test what the shelf has taught you, and everything stays on your device, calm and offline.