Years ago the people of Princeton raised sheep to provide food as well as wool. The wool would be used to knit all kinds of warm clothing to keep them warm during the long cold Newfoundland winter. Every spring the sheep had to be sheared and this was usually done by the women. Almond Bowen remembers when she and her sister used to hold down the sheep while her mother shared it when they lived in Long Beach. Becky Fry of Princeton who was really good at this often helped Mrs. Bowen with this chore. The wool would be removed from the sheep by using sharp scissors. This was referred to as shearing the sheep.

The wool was then washed and spread out to dry. The next step was carding the wool. Carding was usually left to be done in the fall of the year. Two cards were used for this process. The card was a wooden board about eight by two inches in size with a handle on the top and teeth on the bottom. The carder would put some wool on the cards and pull it back and forth catching the wool in the teeth until they formed a roll of wool. The role would be about the size of a big piece of rope about three or four feet in length.

The spinning wheel was used to spin the roll of wool into different sizes of yarn. They would take two strands of yarn and twist together to make two ply wool and so on. After spinning the wool they would coil it into what they referred to as hanks and wash it again. When the wool was dried it would be rolled up into balls and ready to be knit up.

The heavy yarn would be used for knitting work clothes like mitts, socks and sweaters for the men. The smaller yarn was used for knitting men’s dress socks and underwear. The really fine yarn was called worsted and was used for knitting items like socks for the girls.

Many people in Princeton owned spinning wheels back in those days but they have mostly all vanished. Fernie Moss’s mother Thelma owned a spinning wheel and today it is owned by Thelma’s grandson. The spinning wheel is no longer used but it is a reminder of how self sufficient the people really were back then. The sheep too are vanishing along with the spinning wheels. There are no sheep in Princeton but a few can still be found in a nearby community. The people today still do a little knitting but the wool is mostly purchased from the store.