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Spool   /spul/   Listen
Spool

verb
(past & past part. spooled; pres. part. spooling)
1.
Transfer data intended for a peripheral device (usually a printer) into temporary storage.
2.
Wind onto a spool or a reel.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Spool" Quotes from Famous Books



... thought Christie, longing to cry out: "No, no; send the girl away and let me be all in all to you." But she only turned up the lamp and pretended to be looking for a spool, while her heart ached and her eyes ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott

... reel, and holding it high up, by the projecting handle-ends of the spindle, round which the spool of line revolved, so stood with the angular log hanging downwards, till Ahab ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... are several methods for this, the following being that preferred and generally used by the writer: Leave a spare end of thread, sufficient for the number of stitches you wish to cast on, lying toward the left, the spool or ball from which the working-thread is drawn being at the right. Lay the thread between the little finger and the third of the left hand; bring the working-thread across the palm of the hand, around the thumb and back between the forefinger and second finger; bend the forefinger over ...
— Handbook of Wool Knitting and Crochet • Anonymous

... pal had missed, then he realized what Scotty had done. The spear shaft was attached to a long wire leader, and the leader to a safety line coiled around a spool just ahead of the pistol grip. Scotty had deliberately fired ahead of the propeller, knowing that the wire leader would be caught and ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin

... pay ten cents a spool," said the customer, "and I suppose that's what it is here. If it's any more I can stop in the next time I pass. That is, unless you can find out ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Keeping Store • Laura Lee Hope

... return, they're generally too busy lobbying for essentials to bother telling tall tales. So, comparatively few people are really familiar with star ships and the ins and outs of paraspace. Ask a starman, you won't have any trouble recognizing one, even in mufti; or, better yet, get a spool labeled: "THE CONQUEST OF PARASPACE: A History of the Origins and Early Application of Star Drive." It's old, but good, and it was written ...
— Attrition • Jim Wannamaker

... Pollock stringing barbed wire fence. He had never done this before. The spools of wire weighed on him heavily. A crowbar thrust through the core made them a sort of axle with which to carry it. Thus they walked forward, revolving the heavy spool with the greatest care while the strand of wire unwound behind them. Every once in a while a coil would kink, or buckle back, or strike as swiftly and as viciously as a snake. The sharp barbs caught at their clothing, and tore Bob's hands. Jack Pollock seemed familiar with the idiosyncrasies ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... mischance, get into a young lady's work-basket, was there in rare confusion. Jessie's love of order was not very large. Her temper was often sorely tried by the trouble which her careless habit caused her when seeking a pair of scissors, or a spool of cotton. It was so to-day. She plunged her hand deep into the basket, in search of the colored worsteds required for her uncle's slippers. After feeling round awhile, she drew forth a tangled mess, which she ...
— Jessie Carlton - The Story of a Girl who Fought with Little Impulse, the - Wizard, and Conquered Him • Francis Forrester

... daily communion. He sits across the table from me when I eat, and talks casually enough of the trivially momentous problems of the minute, or he reads in his slippers before the fire while I do my sewing within a spool-toss of him. But a row of invisible assegais stand leveled between his heart and mine. A slow glacier of green-iced indifferency shoulders in between us; and gone forever is the wild-flower aroma of youth, the singing spirit of April, the mysterious light that touched our world with wonder. He is ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer

... run across the street for a minute to ask Mrs. Wibblewobble to lend me a spool of thread. It is so chilly out that I don't want to take you along. So will you be afraid to stay here alone, just a ...
— Curly and Floppy Twistytail - The Funny Piggie Boys • Howard R. Garis

... spool and thimble bags, whisk broom cases, comb and brush cases, hairpin holders, pin cushions, paper and letter racks, bureau covers, stand covers, ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 3, March, 1889 • Various

... Pet, there's a snarl of thread in the work-basket. Don't you remember, the spool rolled under the table, and nobody saw it go, and the boys kicked it up and made it into a mess, an' Mamsie put it into the little bag, an' I was to pick it out when I got time? If you only could do that, Phronsie, just think how it ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney

... trouble with a number of the riveted splices on the banding. Such a splice occurs for every spool of banding used. In every case where one of these splices has pulled apart, the break was the result of defective riveting, permitting the rivets to pull out. In no case has a rivet been found sheared off, and even one good rivet appears to be sufficient to prevent rupture. The explanation ...
— The Water Supply of the El Paso and Southwestern Railway from Carrizozo to Santa Rosa, N. Mex. • J. L. Campbell

... often prove a fortune to a young man. Mr. Butler, a merchant in Providence, R. I., had once closed his store and was on his way home when he met a little girl who wanted a spool of thread. He went back, opened the store, and got the thread. This little incident was talked of all about the city and brought him hundreds of customers. He became very wealthy, largely because of ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... us, and would dearly like to try the machine herself, but every time she comes near, Olga says: "Be careful, mother, you'll despise it." And when the spool needs filling, and her mother takes the shuttle in her hand a moment, the child is once more afraid it may be "despised." [Footnote: Foragte, literally "despise." The word is evidently to be understood as used in error by the girl herself, ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun

... empty room in detail, and inspected your embroidery-frame, with the work still hanging on it. It had been left untouched in its corner. Next, I inspected the work itself, of which there still remained a few remnants, and saw that you had used one of my letters for a spool upon which to wind your thread. Also, on the table I found a scrap of paper which had written on it, "My dearest Makar Alexievitch I hasten to—" that was all. Evidently, someone had interrupted you at an interesting point. Lastly, behind a screen there was your little bed. . . . Oh darling ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... the spool of silk, when Babiche stood on her absurd head, a trick she'd not performed before ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke

... poor rude wolf wool chew you soon rule could foot crew to noon tool would good brew shoe whom school should hood drew prove food spool woman wood threw broad whose roof shook stood screw moon tomb broom crook pull strew goose stoop roost hook bush shrewd took full ...
— How to Teach Phonics • Lida M. Williams

... affirmed that it was true. "Every time the dum fool goes out takin' orders," said Eliphalet, "he stays so long that I begin to think he's turned into a permanent fixture. Takes an order for a quarter pound of tea and a spool of cotton and then hangs 'round and talks steady for half an hour. Permanent fixture! Permanent gas ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... while the persevering Miss Norma rattled an empty spool in a tin cup violently to distract the baby's thoughts. "And how old is ...
— The Angel of the Tenement • George Madden Martin

... successful. The machine which she had had in mind proved to be an oak box, perhaps eighteen inches long, by half the width, and a foot deep. On its face it bore a little dial. Inside there appeared a fine wire on a spool which unwound gradually by clockwork, and, after passing through a peculiar small arrangement, was wound up on another spool. Flexible silk-covered copper wires led ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve

... as lithe as a cat, and as active as a monkey, and the confinement of sewing was her abomination; so she broke her needles, threw them slyly out of the window, or down in chinks of the walls; she tangled, broke, and dirtied her thread, or, with a sly movement, would throw a spool away altogether. Her motions were almost as quick as those of a practised conjurer, and her command of her face quite as great; and though Miss Ophelia could not help feeling that so many accidents could not possibly happen ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... thrown high, he was tossed aside like a thing of paper, but blind, half stunned, he scrambled back to his post. By this time the whole structure of the derrick was rocking to the mad gyrations of the bull wheel; the giant spool was spinning with a speed that threatened to send it flying, like the fragments of a bursting bomb, but the youth understood dimly the danger of stopping it too suddenly—to fetch up that plunging weight at the cable end might snap the line, collapse ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... trial came to an end. The seemingly endless spool of legal red tape having unrolled over a period of four and a half years, suddenly snapped off. Anthony and Gloria and, on the other side, Edward Shuttleworth and a platoon of beneficiaries testified and lied and ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... giving the child opportunity to experience realities that cannot be treated untruthfully. To this end various kinds of hand work and scientific study have been useful. It is impossible for the child to cheat the tools of the workshop or his instruments of precision; it is impossible to make a spool of thread do the work of two or three; or one cannot make the paint go farther by applying the brush faster. It is concrete reality that can teach the imaginative child reality; in the things he learns from books there is no check upon the imagined and ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg

... out, and wound it on a spool as Miss Abigail had taught her, half wishing that she had not said anything about the other verses, since she might now have been out at play with Ruthy, Miss Abigail repeated some more of the verses she had learned when she, too, was a ...
— Ruby at School • Minnie E. Paull

... you have got my spool," cried Emily, as she stooped down and caught hold of the thread which puss had entangled about the sofa legs; but kitty was in a playful mood and would not give up the cotton-spool at once, so Emily amused herself playing ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... The spool was as big around as David's body, and the stuff that looked like rubber tubing looked all twisty, as if there were ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins

... struggled with spool-thread and tape in a dry- goods store at Ogdensburg, on the St. Lawrence River, State of New York. He Rallied Round the Flag, Boys, and HAILED Columbia every time she passed that way. One day a regiment returning from the war ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne

... a calico or gingham dress pattern they threw in their profit by giving a spool of thread (two hundred yards), hooks and eyes and lining. In the thread business, however, it was only a few years after that thirty and fifty yard spools took the place of the two hundred yards."—"History ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... with an overwhelming passion for making puddings and darning socks, I hear. Alice says she believes Mrs. Cyril knows every dish and spoon by its Christian name, and that there's never so much as a spool of thread out of order ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter

... reel round, paying or dealing out and down the turns of the skein or coil right to the earth floor, the ground, where it lies in a heap, as it were, or rather is all wound off on to another winch, reel, bobbin or spool in Fancy's eye, by the moment the bird touches earth and so is ready for a fresh unwinding at the next flight. Crisp means almost crisped, ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins

... he had found matches, and weapons, and clothing, the latter of thin material wound as tightly as cotton on a spool; and, as stated, as the fire burned and blazed and crackled, he felt quite comfortable; and, as the storm broke over his cabin, a warm glow of satisfaction circulated through ...
— The Dock Rats of New York • "Old Sleuth"

... face. Through its round eye plates he looked at the others who crowded about him. Grotesque, almost ludicrous—twenty men, armed with clumsy sub-machine guns; the others would follow later. A searchlight was on a tripod at the center, and a spool of ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin

... do befo' goin' to bed. We'd have a little basket of cotton and had to pick de seeds all out of dat cotton befo' we went to bed. And we could all ca'd and spin—yes suh—make dat old spinnin' wheel go Z-z-z-z as you walked back and fo'f a-drawin' out de spool of ya'n. And you could weave cloth and make all yo' own britches, too. (Here his wife interpolated a homely illustration of the movement of "de shettle" in the ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration

... blazing, at that—never gets noon; though—leaves off and rises again. Nobody can help liking the creature, he means so well—but I do dread to come across him again; he's bound to set us all crazy, of coarse. Well, there goes old widow Hopkins—it always takes her a week to buy a spool of thread and trade a hank of yarn. Maybe Si can come ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

... two permanent horseshoe magnets, fixed parallel with each other and an inch apart. A very thin spool or bobbin of insulated wire is suspended, like the pendulum of a clock, between these permanent magnets, in such a manner that the bobbin hangs just in front of the four poles. A counterpoise is fixed at the top of the pendulum bar, which permits the adjusting of the antagonistic forces ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various

... word, so that he was in the truest sense a purely extemporaneous speaker. Sincerity, intensity, imagination and humor, he had in preeminent degree, and an English style that has been described as "a long bright river of silver speech which unwound, evenly and endlessly, like a ribbon from a revolving spool that could fill itself as fast as it emptied itself." Thirty-eight volumes of his sermons were issued in his lifetime and are still in increasing demand. Dr. Robertson Nicoll says: "Our children will think more of these sermons than we do; and as I get older I read them more and more." He died ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser

... see how long you can keep them. Let me count two hearts, four red fishes, three barley-sugar horses, nine almonds, and a dozen chocolate drops. Do you agree to that?" asked sly Mrs. Jo, popping the sweeties into her little spool-bag. ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... possibilities to be starved, even in youth, if he could judge from his memory, now very dim, of how she had seemed to him in Rome, when he had first met her, along with Marise. He remembered that he had said of her fantastically, to a fellow in the pension, that she reminded him of a spool of silk thread. And now the silk thread had all been wound off, and there was only the ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... Delia. Gypsy, all in a flutter at having her name read right out in school, and divided between her horror lest the kitten she had tied to a spool of thread at recess, had been discovered, and an awful suspicion that Mr. Jonathan Jones saw her run across his plowed field after chestnuts, went slowly up to ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... of high-powered cars. He was in high humor as the buckboard was greased, a team of buckskins given a special feed and a rub-down, and various articles gathered for transportation. Among these were a spool of barbed wire and a ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn

... than, while the others were looking at the line, which was now unreeling from a spool on which it was wound, the shark came suddenly to the surface, its big ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose

... morning, their house had stood. Though nothing now was left of it but some charred wood, the place was still home to them. As Fetuao moved forlornly about, picking up a few trifles that had been dropped or thrown away by the invaders—a comb, a spool of thread, a flatiron, a book or two with the covers scorched off—she lifted up a grimy rag and tossed it, with a little gesture of disdain, at her husband's feet. He spread it out and saw that it was ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... shows the use of a permanent horse-shoe magnet and the second (Fig. 54) an electro-magnet consisting of an iron rod with a coil or spool magnet at the outer end. In either case the magnet should not be allowed to become heated but should be ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin

... one end they could be either raised up above the level of the first row or dropped beneath it. Sitting at the tied end her mother would throw a little wooden boat skimming between the two sets of threads, from one side to the other, the boat being laden with a spool of yarn and dragging a thread behind it. When the boat reached the other side, the thread would be drawn tight. Then with the foot in a strap the loose bar would be drawn down, taking one set of threads with it, and there would be the boat's ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True

... that extent," said Crewe with a smile. "But undoubtedly Sir Horace got in the first shot. If he fired after he was hit his bullet would have gone wild—would probably have struck the ceiling—whereas it landed there. Let us measure the height from the floor." He pulled a small spool out of a waistcoat pocket and drew out a tape measure. "A little high for the heart of an average man, and probably a foot wide ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson

... the shutter at just the proper moment. The same machinery feeds down a fresh section of the ribbon-like film into position and coils the exposed portion in a dark box, just as the film of a kodak is rolled off one spool and, after exposure, is wound up on another. The film used in the biograph when taking the Suburban was two and three-fourth inches wide and several hundred feet long; about forty exposures were made per second, and for each exposure the film had to come to a dead stop before ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday

... was fastened to the square of the pivot I do not kno. We did in some cases bore a hole thru and simply stick the spring thru but this put most of the action right at the bend in the wire and it broke quickly. So in other cases we fitted a light grooved spool or pulley and wound the spring around this and so avoided a sharp bend. If this was used it has been lost with the spring. A couple generations of boys playing in that barn was ...
— The 1893 Duryea Automobile In the Museum of History and Technology • Don H. Berkebile

... obtained if we remember that a 300-foot length of common iron telegraph wire has a resistance of 1 ohm. An approximate ohm for rough work in the laboratory may be made by winding 9 feet 5 inches of number 30 copper wire on a spool or arranging it in any ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark

... at all. I mean that he babbled. Literally. Here: I've got a sample recording in my files." He got up from his chair and went to the tall gray filing cabinet that hid in a far corner of the pine-paneled room. From a drawer he extracted a spool of common audio tape, and ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett

... we are winding thread, and it is tangled, we pass the spool across and through the skein, now this way, now that way; even so, to finish off the War, we shall send embassies hither and thither ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... rector or one of the servants looked in to see "Jinny" or "Miss Jinny dressed for the party," and when such interruptions occurred, Mrs. Pendleton, who sat on an ottoman at the dressmaker's right hand and held a spool of thread and a pair of scissors in her lap, would say sternly, "Don't move, Jinny, stand straight or Miss Willy won't get the bows right." At these warning words, Virginia's thin shoulders would spring back and the filmy ruffles stir gently ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... Weaving. Yarn is wound on bobbins on the ring or mule spinning frame. These bobbins are transferred to a machine called a spooler where the yarn is re-wound on a spool preparatory to making ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley

... per cent. water, and 5 per cent. carbolic acid, and is then stored in 90 per cent. alcohol. (3) Cladius recommends that the catgut, just as it is bought from the dealers, be loosely rolled on a spool, and then immersed in a solution of—iodine, 1 part; iodide of potassium, 1 part; distilled water, 100 parts. At the end of eight days it is ready for use. Moschcowitz has found that the tensile strength of catgut so prepared ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... from her at last, to take in the accessories of my chamber, tiny as this was, and I saw that against the wall were hanging a gentleman's greatcoat and hand-satchel. Cigars and books were piled on the same table which held the spool and scissors of my companion, and a pair of cloth slippers, embroidered with colored chenilles and quilted lining, of masculine size and shape, reposed upon the floor. A cane and umbrella were secured neatly in a small corner rack. There were no traces, ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... Linen Drills, Twills, White Corduroys, Fancy Cloakings, Tailors' Trimmings, Ladies' Dress and Cloak Trimmings, Gimp, Fringes, Braids, Buttons, Superior Quality Spool Cotton, Perfumery, Toilet ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various

... Will testamento. Will-o'-the-wisp erarlumo. Willing, to be voli. Willingly volonte. Willow saliko. Willy-nilly vole-nevole. Wily ruza. Win gajni. Wince ektremi. Winch turnilo. Wind (air) vento. Wind (coil) vindi. Wind (twist) tordi. Wind (on spool) bobenumi. Wind up (watch, etc.) strecxi. Winding sheet morttuko, mortkitelo. Windlass turnilo. Window fenestro. Window blind rulkurteno. Windpipe trahxeo. Windy venta. Wine vino. Wine making vinfarado. Wine merchant ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... the store was as if proclaimed through the resounding trump of fame. The store in a Mississippi neighborhood, frequented by the surrounding planters, great and small, was the focus of civilization, the dispenser of all the wares of the world, from a spool of thread to a two-horse wagon, the post-office, in a manner the club. Here, sooner or later, everybody came, and hence was the news of the Bend noised abroad. Hoxer's business could scarcely recover from this disparagement, and he had not doubted that Jeffrey would ...
— The Crucial Moment - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... You've read the Bible, havn't you, doctor? It is a powerful book. It tells about Moses and the Lamb. I'll tell you a story, Helen, about a Lamb that was slain. I've told you a great many, but never one like this. Come nearer, for I can't speak very loud. Take care, the thread is sliding off the spool. Cut it, doctor, cut it; it's winding round my heart so tight! Oh, my ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... popular language of those districts. 'On entering a house there, one will find the housewife sitting with her rock (Dan., Rok; Eng., a distaff) and spoele (Dan., Spole; Eng., spool, a small wheel on the spindle); or else she has set both her rock and her garnwindle (Dan., Garnvinde; Eng., reel or yarn-winder) aside, whilst standing by her back-bword (Dan., Bagebord; Eng., baking-board) she is about to knead dough ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various

... of visual memory. When played in a parlor, all the players are seated except one, who passes around a tray or a plate, on which are from six to twenty objects, all different. These may include such things as a key, spool of thread, pencil, cracker, piece of cake, ink bottle, napkin ring, small vase, etc. The more uniform the size and color of the objects the more difficult will be the test. The player who carries the tray will pass at the pace of an ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft

... she gasped, as they rolled down past Forty-seventh Street. "Oh, look at the kitten chasing the spool, all in ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess

... older ones—those made in the eighteenth century—are very decorative, and now much sought after by collectors. Those illustrated in Fig. 74 have been selected from a large collection for their representative types: (A) is the oldest; the ornament is of pewter let into the wood, it has a very small spool; (B) is ivory, the incised parts stained green; (C) is bone, the incised pattern filled in with gold beaten into a thin plate; (D) is also of bone with a band of brass and coloured inlays; (E) walnut wood, turned in the deep grooves are six loose silver rings, ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess

... which the inventor styles a bouquetiere, consists of a stationary rod (shown to the right of the figure), upon which slides a spool wound with twine, and the lower part of which is provided with three springs for keeping the twine taut. A horizontal arm at the top supports a guide or pattern whose curve is to be followed, on placing the flowers in position. This arm is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various

... thee do that. I'm only going for the mail, and some little things at the store, that make no weight at all. Thee mustn't think I'm like the young women in the city, who,—I'm told,—if they buy a spool of cotton, must have it sent home to them. Besides, thee mustn't over-exert ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... a Family Bible, Grant's Memoirs, the latest novel by Mrs. Gene Stratton Porter, a wooden model of a Swiss chalet which was also a bank for dimes, a polished abalone shell holding one black-headed pin and one empty spool, a velvet pin-cushion in a gilded metal slipper with "Souvenir of Troy, N. Y." stamped on the toe, and an unexplained red glass dish which ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... thin little shawl of dingy brick-dust hue about her shoulders. No matter what the occasion or what the day, she always carried her knitting with her, and seldom ceased the incessant twist, twist of the shining steel among the white cotton meshes. She might put down the needles and lace into the spool-box long enough to open oysters, or wrap up fruit and candy, or count out wood and coal into infinitesimal portions, or do her housework; but the knitting was snatched with avidity at the first spare moment, and the worn, white, blue-marked fingers, half enclosed in kid-glove ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar

... "Dad always kept a personal log. You know, a sort of a diary, on microfilm." He peered into the film storage bin, checked through the spools. Then, from down beneath the last row of spools he pulled out a slightly smaller spool. "Here's something our friends missed, ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse

... on the job, if we are, and I'll keep him busy to-morrow morning. You go to the market as usual, then go into that big department store, Ahearn & McManus'. There's a mail chute there, next the notion counter on the ground floor. Buy a spool of thread or somethin', and while you're waitin' for change, drop the letter in the box. You used to be pretty slick in department ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander

... necessaries, save corn and bacon, became desperate. Salt and wheat bread were rare luxuries. In 1864 a suit of jean cost $600, a spool of cotton $30, a pound of bacon $15. It should, of course, be borne in mind that these high prices in part represented the depreciation of Confederate paper money. Drastic drafting and the arming of negroes could avail little for lack of accoutrements and food. Thus Lee's ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord

... thrown much light on this branch of ancient art and craftsmanship in America generally, but added some peculiar forms to the museum's stock, chiefly in the line of pendent ornaments. One of the forms procured, represented by many specimens, was a spool-shaped ear-ring: something like it had been seen heretofore, but its purpose had been a mystery. Several of the ornaments of copper were covered with native silver, which had been hammered out into thin sheets and folded over the copper. A few were similarly covered with gold; and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... nock, set your thick end of the rib in position on the lines of glue. Hold the shaft under your left arm while with the left thumb, forefinger, and middle finger steady the feathers as they are respectively put in place. With one end of a piece of cotton basting thread in your teeth and the spool in your right hand, start binding the ribs down to the arrow shaft. After a few turns proceed up the shaftment, adjusting the feathers in position as you rotate the arrow. Let your basting thread slip between the bristles of the feather about half an inch apart. When you come to the rear end, finish ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope

... box of matches, a paper-covered copy of a book entitled "Mary, the Beautiful Mill-Hand," a bottle of embrocation, a spool of cotton, two pencil-stubs, and other useful and entertaining objects. It contained, in fact, almost everything except a paint-splashed shoe, and Baxter gazed at ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... room, where Phronsie and she had thrown themselves, the piece-box of ribbons between them, "here comes Clem up the drive; now I 'most know she wants me to help her on that sofa-pillow," and she twitched a square of yellow silk into a tighter tangle. "How in the world did that spool get in ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney

... she is, she still understands all that men do, and does it. Under her hands the estates in Virginia have developed even more than under the hands of my brother. She controls like another Elizabeth. She has made those estates run like a spool of thread, and she will do the same here with Salem. Be sure ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... realize that the woman was in a hurry to get rid of her and she hastened away, relieved yet puzzled at the whole affair. She rode down into the village mechanically and bought a spool of silk and the coffee strainer which had been her legitimate errand to the village, and turning back had scarcely passed the last house before she saw the Chief's car coming toward her, and Mark, his face white and haggard, looking out from the back seat. He drew back as he recognized her, ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill

... the Mess, the Regimental Office, and about ten bungalows for the officers, single-storied brick or rubble-walled buildings, thatched or tiled. Some of them were unoccupied and were tumbling in ruins. There was nothing else—not even the "general shop" usual in most small cantonments. Not a spool of thread, not a tin of sardines, could be purchased within a three days' journey. Most of the food supplies and almost everything else had to be brought from Bombay. Around the bungalow the compounds were simply patches of the universal sands surrounded by mud walls. No flowers, no trees, not ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly

... Steam is what makes the wheels go round, and steam is well-digested fuel and a place to put it. With this equipment a man can put "GO" into his business, strength into his literature, virility into his brush; without it he may succeed in selling spool cotton or bobbins, may write pink poems for the multitude and cover wooden panels with cardinals and ladies of high degree; in real satin and life-like lace, but no part of his output will take a ...
— The Man In The High-Water Boots - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith

... a buoyant, youthful affair, this Carey flitting. Light forms darted up and down the stairs and past the windows, appearing now at the back, now at the front of the house, with a picture, or a postage stamp, or a dish, or a penwiper, or a pillow, or a basket, or a spool. The chorus of "Where shall we put this, Muddy?" "Where will this go?" "May we throw this away?" would have distracted a less patient parent. When Gilbert returned from school at four, the air was filled with sounds of hammering and ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... weft into position. A tool which appears to be a beater-in and of similar end shape is seen held in the hand of a woman on a wall painting at El Bersheh—see Fig. 11, top right-hand corner. We have in another illustration, Fig. 7, an article which appears to be a spool, which I think confirms the view that E is not the shuttle but the beater-in. In all the illustrations, too, the pose of the hands of the women bearing on this stick is indicative of a downward pressure and not of ...
— Ancient Egyptian and Greek Looms • H. Ling Roth

... the manufacturer of machines to weave, to spin, to spool, and to wind the silk—was not sufficiently smitten to believe in the innocence of the dyer's wife, and swore a devilish hate against her. But some days afterwards, when he had recovered from his wetting in the dyer's drain he came up to sup ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... plantation work, and handed him over to their surveyor, who needed a man to help him. I used often to meet him after this, tripping at his master's heels with the theodolite, or scampering about with tapes and chains like a kitten with a spool of thread. He did not look then as though he were destined to die of a broken heart, though that was his end not so many months afterward. The plantation manager told me that Arick and a New Ireland boy went crazy with home-sickness, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... forgotten their joke in a game of Letters, when "Tingle, tangle!" went the bell, and the basket came in heavily laden. A roll of colored papers was tied outside, and within was a box that rattled, a green and silver horn, a roll of narrow ribbons, a spool of strong thread, some large needles, and a ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott

... said that the corn and the melon already selected would do for the time. To oblige them, however, he would take up a modest collection. He passed his hat and received a silver twenty-five cent piece, a spool of thread with a needle in it, a one-bladed jack-knife and two candy hearts with mottoes on them—these last being from the girls, who blushed and giggled as they contributed. Then he said good-by, and the Todd family showed them a gate that led into the thick woods. ...
— The Arkansaw Bear - A Tale of Fanciful Adventure • Albert Bigelow Paine

... mother's work-basket and got a spool of thread, then to the meal chest for a handful of corn. Sitting down on the door-step, he tied long strings of thread to each grain of corn, then climbed the fence, and commenced what was fun for him, but ...
— Harper's Young People, May 25, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... pockets his spool of very fine wire, attached it low down to a slim young pine, carried it across to the edge of the cliff, and attached the other end to a sapling on the edge of the ledge. On this wire he hung his cowbell and hooked the ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers

... rav'lin's. Here is some rav'lin's I use. I pull that out of tobacco sacks, flour sacks, anything, when I don't have the money to buy a spool of thread. I sew right on just as good with the rav'lin's as if it was thread. Tobacco sacks make the best rav'lin's. I got two bags full of tobacco sacks that I ain't unraveled yet. There is a man ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration

... prayer-books and guide-books, a bottle of soda mint tablets, a spool of dental floss, a Bath bun, a bit of gray frizz that aunt Celia pins into her steamer cap, a spectacle case, a brandy flask, and a bonbon box, which broke and scattered cloves and cardamom seeds. (I hope he guessed aunt Celia is a dyspeptic, and not intemperate!) All this was hopelessly ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... there are six million miles of it owned by the affiliated Bell companies. Instead of blackening the streets, the wire nerves of the telephone are now out of sight under the roadway, and twining into the basements of buildings like a new sort of metallic ivy. Some cables are so large that a single spool of cable will weigh twenty-six tons and require a giant truck and a sixteen-horse team to haul it to its resting-place. As many as twelve hundred wires are often bunched into one sheath, and each cable lies loosely in a ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson

... about the quilt she made? It's white, and has a big bunch o' grapes in the centre, quilted by a thimble top. Then there's a row of circle-borderin' round the grapes, and she done them the size of a spool. The next border was done with a sherry glass, and the last with a port glass, an' all outside o' that was solid stitchin' done in straight rows; she's goin' to exhibit it at ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... optimistic propaganda. Perfectly normal—when one found only three customers in a large department store! Perfectly normal—when the big steamship offices presented in their windows bare blue seas which had once been charted with the going and coming of German ships! Perfectly normal—when the spool of the killed and wounded rolled out by yards like that of a ticker on a busy day on the Stock Exchange! Perfectly normal—when women tried to smile in the streets with eyes which had plainly been weeping ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... clicked steadily, the man working it occasionally calling out the number of feet of blank film left on the spool so that the director might know whether to hasten or retard the action of ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr

... Raybold. "That's nonsense. He's not in the least like an actor. Anybody could see by his tread and his air that he's never been on the stage. He's more like a travelling salesman. The next thing he'll do will be to pull out of that bag some samples of spool thread or patent thimbles." ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton

... make his visits to Mrs. Starling's house more frequent than ever. It was little he did to recommend himself when he was there; he generally sat watching Diana, carrying on a spasmodic and interrupted conversation with Mrs. Starling about farm affairs, and seizing the opportunity of a dropped spool or an unwound skein of yarn to draw near Diana and venture some word to her. Poor Diana felt in those days so much like a person whose earthly ties are all broken, that it did not come into her head in what a different light she stood ...
— Diana • Susan Warner

... the darkroom winding the infrared film on hundred-foot rolls and placing them in light-tight cans, then he reloaded the camera with a full spool. That done, there was nothing to do but wait and ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine

... at start with a knot or knot and back stitch and finished with two or three back stitches. The length of thread may be broken or cut from the spool, but should always be cut from the work. Breaking weakens the fastening and biting off soils delicate work with the moisture from the breath, to say nothing of the injury to the teeth. Basting for large work should usually be ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson

... I was thinking how I'd dress her for the last spool in the big fire scene. Well, anyway, I'm this Hawaiian princess, and my father, old King Mauna Loa, dies and leaves me twenty-one thousand volcanoes ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson

... read aloud, or sewed, or played guessing games. She felt rather hurt, too, that Eleanor paid her so little attention, and several times she tried hard to make her stay, trailing in front of her a spool tied to a string or rolling a worsted ball across the floor. But Eleanor seemed to have lost all her taste for the things she had liked so much. Invariably, the moment the door was opened, she darted ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield

... glasses. "I didn't see you all day yesterday and not the day before, neither. But I put it down to a work-hold on us both, and didn't worry none. And now here you are, with some of the little folks! Here's a empty spool for little Bettie," and she held out the treasure to the toddler, who sidled up to her knee with ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess

... signs that I was to accompany them to the forward part of the berth deck. On reaching the extreme end, which was occupied by an immense hawser reel, "Bill" indicated a hammock which was swinging with the forward clews directly above the great spool, or reel. ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday

... we are winding, It chances to tangle, then, as perchance you may know, through the skein This way and that still the spool we keep passing till it is finally clear all again: So to untangle the War and its errors, ambassadors out on all sides we will send This way and that, here, there and round about—soon you will find that the War ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes

... though," answered Bob, returning the smile. "In fact it is a very simple device—nothing more than a dozen or so twists of copper wire reeled about a wooden frame exactly as strands of thread might be wound round a spool. One end of the inductance is connected permanently with the ground and from the other end two movable wires go out, one of which can be connected with the spark gap and the other with the antenna that goes into the air and catches the sound waves. There isn't anything very terrible ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett

... robbers, but to escape a possibly far worse fate. Just as he started to follow out this idea, Slippery stepped around the corner, and after he once more warned the lad not to falter in shooting to kill, he gave Joe a spool of fine copper wire to hold and when the surprised boy wished to know the reason, he showed Joe where he had the other end of the same wire twisted about his wrist, and cautioned him to hold it taut and that every time he gave the wire a ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)

... the light-tight door was closed, and lowered the ruby glass over the orange on Myra's imposing dark-room lamp; she believed in doing things comfortably; no messing about with an old-fashioned "hock-bottle" for her. I took the spool from my pocket and began ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux

... with the knack or ability to do certain things twice as well and twice as quickly as other people can do the same things. I well remember that when all Europe was wild over the "Diabolo" craze my little girl commenced to play with the sticks and the little spool. It looked interesting and I thought that I would try it a few times and then show her how to do it. The more I tried the more exasperated I became. I simply could not make it go, and before I knew it I had wasted a whole morning upon it. My ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke

... shan't make any promises; if I need a spool of thread and can save a walk, I shall go over there to get it," Miss ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard

... bare, clean rooms and its spotless floors. She rose abruptly and went out to the rear of the house, where Tommy was playing with Europena Wiggs. They were absorbed in trying to hitch the duck to a spool-box, and ...
— Lovey Mary • Alice Hegan Rice

... in the family. Now it stands to reason that when a person goes into a store and sees nothin' but old calicoes, and some other odds and ends, gettin' mustier and dustier and a little more fly-specked every time, and never a new thing, even so much as a spool of cotton thread, then persons isn't likely to go often into that store, specially when there's a new one in the village that keeps ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton

... stopping her work as she spoke, she made her wheel go faster than before; and I gazed with admiration at her deft fingering of the wool, from which the thread flowed in a continuous line, as if it had been something plastic, towards the revolving spool. ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald

... as usual," returned the same cheery voice, its owner changing the position of the garment in her lap and reaching for a spool of silk. ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter

... at once, for time pressed. The old formulas had failed, and a new one had to be made, but, after all, the object was not extravagant or eccentric. One sought no absolute truth. One sought only a spool on which to wind the thread of history without breaking it. Among indefinite possible orbits, one sought the orbit which would best satisfy the observed movement of the runaway star Groombridge, 1838, commonly called Henry Adams. As term of a ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... her crochet needle into her spool. "I usually dip my smelts in bread crumbs. Have you ever tried them ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst



Words linked to "Spool" :   reel, transfer, wrap, roll, winder, computer science, bobbin, twine, computing, cheese, filature, shuttle, wind



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