Making Spindles

December 10th, 2007

If you’ve been reading this blog you may remember my attempts at making support spindles out of knitting needles and beads. Well, it seems spindle making has become a small hobby of mine, because I’ve got a couple more under my belt. I find it inredibly fascinating, fun, and cool that I can make my own tool to spin fiber into yarn. Perhaps it’s because before I knew anything about spinning I thought you had to have a spinning wheel. A fellow LibriVoxer, knitter, and spinner ([Betsie](http://forget-me-nots-and-fireweed.blogspot.com/)) set me straight with a link to a PDF describing how to make what is called a *spindle* (I had no clue at the time!) out of old CDs. I never made them because I couldn’t find the grommet I needed, but I’ve found other ways to make them myself.

This lovely little thing was made with a metal coat hanger, and I’ve got two of them (the photographs are of just one). It’s an incredibly fun way to use a support spindle, as you just roll the empty part of the shaft on your thigh, and draft out horizontally. I’m going to make some improvements by adding a thicker bottom so that it’s easier to roll, and softening up the edges that I cut using the needle-nosed plier cutter. I’m pretty pleased with my hook bending skills too.

This is something a bit less simple, and involving quite a bit more work (I know, same picture as yesterday but I didn’t mention how it was made). I’d heard of people making polymer clay whorls and attaching them to dowels, so I thought I’d try it out myself. I got 2 whorls out of each of 2 standard sized blocks of the clay (for 4 whorls) which took me quite some time. I don’t have any of the typical tools that most people who work regularly with this clay use. I had to sort of shape them by hand and carefully roll them evenly flat. Some are more balanced than others, but it does the job. I’m having to resort again to the muslin to keep the whorl from sliding off as I did with my beaded support spindles, but it seems to be the best way of keeping them temporarily on. Since I have 4 whorls I want to be able to use as many or few as I need.

Apart from the spinning, this is one of the coolest parts of spinning. Does that even make any sense?

This entry was posted on Monday, December 10th, 2007 at 6:14 pm and is filed under Spinning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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