Today I pulled out my mom’s old drop spindle and did some internet searches to figure out how to use it. I had already fallen in love with spinning before we left Seattle and am on the hunt for a wheel, but in the meantime I’ll spin with whatever I can get my hands on. It was filled with yarn she had spun way back when she was in her twenties. I wound it off and started some of my own.
To use a drop spindle you hold onto the yarn coming off the top, spin the spindle that is dangling below, and feed in wool fluff to the end of the existing yarn. As you give a little fluff it twists up thanks to the twirling spindle. When you have a length of yarn you stop and wind it onto the spindle. It makes fantastic, fuzzy threads and you have complete control over its weight, knobbiness, and twist. Wow.
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Where did you get the wool fluff? You don’t have your own sheep yet, do you?
— Charlie27 April, 2011 at 7:57 am
No sheep yet (maybe next year). This fluff is from a yarn store.
— K27 April, 2011 at 8:06 am
With the caveats that I really respect what you’re doing, think it’s really cool, and really like you guys a lot, going to the yarn store to buy fluff to spin into yarn reminded me a little bit of this classic article: http://tinyurl.com/6ksf77n
— Charlie27 April, 2011 at 10:25 am
Yes. We joke that we’re practicing for life in third world countries as that really opens up affordable overseas travel options.
— K27 April, 2011 at 10:51 am
Ohhh, has my mom seen this? When you next visit, leave lots of time, so we can talk chickens, bees, and get my mom to talk fiber crafts. She is slowly re-establishing a studio corner for herself.
— Nicola @ Which Name?16 May, 2011 at 7:01 pm
Nicola – Sounds like a plan.
— A17 May, 2011 at 7:58 am