The sky-blue wool changed from cotton candy fluff to twisted strands with each turn of the wheel.

It appeared to happen as it passed through the thumb and forefinger of Linae Enockson's right hand. But she explained that it is the spinning of the two wheels on the spinning wheel and its effect on the bobbin that pulls the wool.

"It doesn't require a lot of energy from me," she said.

The tapping of her foot on the peddle turns the large wheel, which in turn makes the small wheel turn the bobbin. In an hour, she can fill a bobbin. It took eight bobbins worth of yarn to make a sunset-hued jacket.

The jacket was among the items she had for sale at the Capital A'Fair on Saturday. Her spinning demonstration was free. Also spread out on the pink and white quilt under the shade tree on the Capitol lawn were hats, shawls and skeins of self-stripping yarn.

More than 100 booths of arts, crafts and home decor are on display through today. The event is organized by the Bismarck Arts & Galleries Association. In addition to vendors, there is food and entertainment. Sunday's lineup includes gospel music, bluegrass, a '40s and '50s cover band, Polish dance troupe and a vocalist. The Capital A'Fair runs today from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on the Capitol grounds.

While Enockson spun the wool, she gave some history about the spinning wheel and yarn making. Occasionally, she stopped her foot tapping to take a sale and answer questions. It took her longer than an hour to spin a skein of yarn on Saturday.

She enjoys sharing with people what she knows about textiles. She's a former costume designer from Minneapolis, and knitting was a hobby. She likes using self-striping yarns, which give a multi-hued effect to the item being knitted or crocheted. This type of yarn, especially the higher quality yarns, can be expensive.

Like many resourceful crafters, she thought she could make this kind of yarn at a better cost. She tried some different techniques to make the yarn. It required an industrial-sized carder to combine the different colors of wool. It also was more expensive, she said.

But it led to her own business in Hazelton making yarn from North Dakota sheep. She came to realize, her passion in textiles was with educating other people, not running a business.

She now lives in Bismarck and works at Urban Girl, where her yarn and knits are sold. Her favorite thing to knit is a hat. She looks at skeins of yarn in terms of how many hats she could knit.

A woman perusing the bundles of yarn picked up a skein that was like a partly cloudy day - a little bit of blue and a little bit of white.

"That's one and a half hats or scarves," Enockson said. She wishes she could think in terms of socks, which is what the woman wondered when handling two ivory skeins of yarn, because socks are so popular to knit right now.

Enockson knits from memory, not patterns. She gauges the size of her hats against the size of her hand and decreases her stitches as she goes. They seemed to be the right fit as they were a popular selling item for her Saturday.

Her mother taught her to knit, she thinks. She can't remember for sure, she said. She does know it is part of her Norwegian heritage, just as it is part of her heritage to keep busy.

"It's what we were brought up to do, culturally," she said. "Norwegian-Americans or German-Americans, you were taught it is not good to have idle hands. In Norway, on the bus and at the bus stop, you will see people knitting. It is soothing for me."

Click here for a video of the sights and sounds of the Capital A'Fair

(Reach reporter Sara Kincaid at 250-8251 or sara.kincaid@;bismarcktribune.com.)