Sophia Block says she was born 100 years too late. It's interesting sending men to the moon but spinning flax or wool or patchwork quilts, boiling up a pot of sumac dye or getting up to set a batch of bread while the sun rises over West Tisbury are more her cup of tea.
Birdlike, she dashes from task to task barefooted, in slacks and a sleeveless blouse that keeps her cool even when her fireplace's big beehive is baking pies and beans and pudding.
The house on Music street that she and her husband William, a New York lawyer, live in about half the year, was built in 1817, and was once part of the West Chop lighthouse keeper's house. In 1850, it was moved to West Tisbury and the Blocks bought it about 16 years ago from the late Miss Addie Weeks. Miss Weeks had resided in it -- apparently happily and certainly healthily -- for almost 97 of the 102 years she lived.
There could be no better setting for Mrs. Block's spinning and weaving than her little weathered cottage tucked behind lilac bushes and a big hickory tree. She showed it off proudly the other day, and its decoys and antique bean pots, Shaker chair and 16th century table and handwoven linsey-woolsey.
"Beanpots," she said, "are a sleeper. I use them as canisters and pay anywhere from 25 cents to $3 for them. They'll be discovered someday, like everything else, and everyone will want them, but right now they're just lovely and most satisfactory for keeping things." She smiled affectionately at a row of the polished brown pots on a kitchen counter.
"Christening dresses for babies are another sleeper. You can get such beautiful ones, but nobody wants to iron, so nobody wants them, so I get all sorts of lovely old ones and make pillow slips or slips for wearing from them. And I love to iron!"
Flung on a rocking chair back was a piece of handwoven cloth. "About 150 years old," Mrs. Block commented. "And you know what's sweet? There's a mistake in it! She didn't always add the crossbar when she was making it, and I think that's just precious." She fingered it gently.
Transformed into a pillow cover was a piece of old quilt. "It's just a shred, but I got it from the dump. I cut out what was satisfactory and threw the rest away. Isn't it lovely?"
On a downstairs bedroom bed lay a handspun, handwoven blanket, and under a table was a basket of sheep's fleece.
"Every June I buy a fleece or so from Marjorie Manter's karakul sheep. A fleece weighs about six pounds, I guess, and I pay 50 cents a pound for it. About a third of the weight of any fleece, of course, is dirt and grease, and you never really use a whole fleece. The back and across the shoulders and sides is best. The belly wool is weak because it's rubbed from lying down, and it's usually riffled up and kinky, too. And neck wool isn't much good, either. It's too long and stringy."
Mrs. Block estimates that if she sold the wool she spins (which she rarely does, preferring to give it away as gifts), she would have to charge $3 an ounce for it. "And that would only be getting $1 an hour for my labor." From an ounce of wool, she says, you might get one sock.
Mrs. Block fondly drew forth her old spinning wheel. It is a Swiss wheel made about 1700, of a kind frequently seen in paintings of that period. The Blocks found it in Kennebunkport, Me.
She paused before actually spinning to explain a little of what must go on before. "First, you see, you tease the wool -- that's picking it apart so all the clumps of dirt, twigs and burrs the sheep's caught in his fleece come out."
"After you've teased it, then you card it." Mrs. Block pulled out a rectangular paddle with short bent wires on the face of it and illustrated the combing process.
When the wool has been spun, it is ready for dyeing, and Mrs. Block, characteristically, "loves to make vegetable dyes."
Goldenrod and sumac are two plants that she frequently uses. She cuts all of the flowers off the stalks and then steeps them a long time in boiling water to extract the dye. Then all the flowers are strained out. Meanwhile, the wool is simmered in a "mordant" -- a substance that prepares the wool to absorb the color.
Mrs. Block's fascination with old-time household tasks began when she was a child summering in Maine. "My father had summer camps near Belgrade Lakes, about 15 miles from Augusta. And there was a woman in a farmhouse there who used to make her own doughnuts and patchwork. I remember I wanted to stay with her one winter and learn all those things, but my parents wouldn't let me, but I did learn to tat and knit then."
More recently, Mrs. Block has attended a Frugal American Housewife course at Cooperstown, N.Y., where, in addition to learning more about spinning and weaving, she was taught how to make bayberry candles. She also took spinning lessons on a trip to Sweden once, and in London.
"Oh, spinning is so relaxing and soothing," she exclaimed. "It really is such a pleasant thing to do!"