A Day With the Drop Spindle

Woman spinning. Detail from an Ancient Greek Attic white-ground oinochoe, ca. 490 BC, from Locri, Italy. British Museum, London.










Recently, I spent the day with my drop spindle at one of my favorite places, The Mannings. I love my spinning wheels, I do, but wanted to know more about the capabilities of this old technology.

We first start with fiber:

This is fleece from good, old Jacob sheep that the teacher had washed the day before and dried in the sunshine.












Here's a close up of the fiber after we'd teased it out a little. For me, I would have rather just grabbed lumps of fiber and started making nice chunky, funky yarn, but we weren't there for that. We were there to make nice, smooth yarn for regular knitting and weaving.












So, next, we carded some fleece and made rollags to spin with using hand carders. I appreciate the hand carders, but too slow!!! I can only think of how laborious textile manufacture was using this technology.









And, after lunch, we started to make yarn on our spindles. It was fun and I can see that I'm getting to be a much better spinner, regardless of the technology. I filled my spindle and when I came home, I plyed the single with some hand-strung pearls and here it is:


I'm pretty happy witht he finished product and wished I had about double this amount!!!