Spindle or Wheel?
October 1st, 2007
Last week I made the mistake of checking out [Golding Fiber Tools](http://www.goldingfibertools.com/), and holy crap-crap-crap! Their spindles are dangerous on the bank account, and don’t even *think* about the other stuff they make. I sort of…bought one of the spindles in a moment of weakness. It was a less expensive lace weight one, and I had enough spending money left, I swear! Ohh, I can’t wait until it comes in.
I’ve been writing a lot about spinning in the past week, and doing a lot of it too. It seems kind of fitting to be going through an upswing in my interest, because today starts the National Spinning and Weaving Week. I’ve decided I’m going to celebrate this week by (attempting) t0 post every day *something* about spinning. Since I’m not doing enough spinning to post about each new thing every day, I’m going to have to get creative. Time to look a little closer at this craft and my thoughts about it.
I’ve been doing a ton of reading at the Ravelry forums, especially in the spinning groups. There’s one thread where the poster asks the question, “Spindle or wheel?”. Most of the answers are for a wheel, some like their spindles but mostly use their wheel, and still fewer spindle spin only. I’ve never been able to answer this question, as I’ve never even touched a wheel let alone use one. I have aspirations to getting one some day, but I’m content with my spindles in the meantime. I wonder though, how I’ll feel once I try and get a new wheel. Will I turn away from the spindles and not look back? Will I spin more with the wheel? Will I hate the wheel, and prefer the more manual feel of a spindle? My only hope is that I still enjoy spindle spinning just as much, because I really love the connection to history that using such a simple tool gives me. Spinning wheels in various forms have been around for a long time, but spindles much much longer.
It’s funny how so much of my knitting and spinning brings it all back to history in a way. Thinking of the tools I use and how they little differ from what has been used. Learning about the textile histories of different regions. While thinking about this post, I intended it more to be my thoughts on spindles and wheels, but its drifting more towards spinning tools in general and their historical predecessors.
So, while I know when I’m using my Golding “RingSpindle” with its metal ring on the whorl, and when I some day get a spinning wheel with all its new design elements they are different from the tools originally used for spinning, the process is still exactly the same as what it originally was right from the very start. Stretch out the fiber, and add a bit of twist.
/me drools at the Golding stuff.
I have a wheel, but I still like using my spindle sometimes…. I find I can make much thinner singles on my spindle than on my wheel still, so if I want something thin, that’s often what I use.
I’m hoping for a wheel eventually but in the mean time, those Golding spindles are gorgeous!! I really want an ultra lightweight one. The Golding wheels… wow, they’re as much pieces of art as they are wheels – and totally out of my price range of course!