Look at the size of those shuttles!

The women that came before me were and are quite skilled and crafty. Some of them knitted, croched, sew, did Romanian point lace, spun yarn and wove rugs and towels.

My mother claims she isn't too crafty, but she has done some tailoring and taught me how to sew by hand. I owe to her a good number of handy stitches, which saved my clothes on many occasions!

The only other one in my family I was able to see at work was my grandmother from my father's side. She did so many things: she spun wool, knit, sew and wove. I still remember her spindles, plain wood with two stripes, one green and one pink. She let me play with them. She also had a big weaving loom that took up an entire room! And she definitely had a few wooden shuttles, of course much larger than mine. Most of these are lost now sadly, after her death.

But let me get to the story about the big shuttles!

Last year we went on a small holiday to the mountains and visited an interesting place, the fortified church in Harman, here in Romania. It is a very well kept church, withe a dizyingly high tower and surrounded by a large wall that also held rooms inside. It is now open to the public as a museum.

Inside the rooms in the outer walls, they arranged the items still remaining from those times. The furniture, tools and daily items, some whose purpose I pondered over.

In the garden, they had a display of tools for working yarn. There was a spinning wheel in the back and in the crate there were some very interesting wooden items.

My imagination ran wild with me for a moment, thinking I was looking at spindles and various yarn tools, but the rounded pieces are just spinning wheel legs. The guitar shaped thing in the back made me think of a rug punching tool, but it is not split in two halves...

And last but not least, look at the size of those shuttles! Or is it still just my wishful thinking that the tapered items are shuttles? If anyone can recognise these things and set things straight, I would be quite grateful.