While researching Cedarburg, I really thought I remembered running across something about a working 19th century wool mill. Yet in this wonderful, techno-age we live in, things poof in and out of cyber connection like a dandelion seed drifting on the wind..... they are here one moment and gone the next. We click, click, click and suddenly we are light-years away from where we started, and in a galaxy far, far away.
So upon arriving in Cedarburg, I began asking around for this "wool mill". I got blank stares, and people suggested a gallery that had a lady who spun yarn on a spinning wheel, or the Cedar Creek Settlement, a shopping complex housed in a old yarn mill. Both were intriguing but not quite what I had in mind. Was I crazy? Was this mill a fabrication of my imagination? Wishful thinking? Now I was beginning to wonder (and my husband as well, though he did know I was a bit crazy and married me anyways...)
Before leaving town, we stopped in one last gallery, The Pink Llama, and while browsing, came upon a little alcove with a sign hanging, that read "Cedarburg Woolen Mill and Textile Museum". The little open sign slung on the banister of some very steep, old stairs, beckoned with a mysterious allure. The gallery volunteer indicated that we were lucky, there was someone working the mill today and that we could go check it out.
Descending the stairs, I felt like I was being transported to another time, and another place. I certainly traveled 150 years in that flight of steps, and in the short ceilings and dim lights of a basement work room, I could make out a glorious beast of a machine; the woolen mill I was in search of!