Teaching Spindling

Whelp, I have officially taught my very first class on spindling. I think it went well, though it was cut a bit short. I misread how long the class was going to be, and should have gotten to the spinning part faster.

The first part, though, was getting spindles for all of the kids. I had heard that you could make a good, cheap spindle from a dowel, hook, and wooden toy wheel. Unfortunately, the dowel and the hook were easy to find, the wheel I had a bit more trouble.

First, I bought wheels and dowels from Michaels, but I ordered off the internet without reading the sizes super-carefully. BIG mistake - the wheel was much too small, the dowel too big. Next, I attempted to remedy the mistake by going to a Michaels store near me and finding either a dowel that would fit the wheels I got, or a wheel that would fit my dowel. I found the first, and I found something that could kind of be a wheel-like thing for the second.

But the small wheel made a spindle that was too light to spin very well, and the wheel-like thing turned out to have a tapered hole, so it was useless. I finally gave up on Michaels and went to a specialty website, where I was able to get exactly what I wanted.

The three bears of spindle whirls

I decided on the 2 and 3/4 inch wheel, with the 3/8 inch hole. I got a 12 inch dowel to go with it. Although it is a bit heavy (1.6 oz) It spins fantastic - it just goes and goes without stopping. I got hooks from the local hardware store. It doesn't have a notch, which I know might be a problem later, but for now, it is working great. The wood of the shaft is even soft enough that I didn't need a drill, just some hard pushing and screwing.

Whirl, shaft, hook.

The finished spindle, next to the less  successful one made from the small wheel. The smaller dowel was too narrow to take a hook, so I carved one with a pen knife.

I also put some directions on the whirls, to help out. I put the weight of the spindle, as is traditional (so that you know how much the wool weighs, when you weigh it) but I also wrote which direction to spin for z-twist and which for s-twist.

My helpful tutorial.

Now that I had my supplies, I put together a whole kit of wool and string and glue to let the kids make their spindles and learn to spin. I picked some of my cheap, dyed wool top of unknown breed for the lesson, since it is easier to see the twist in dyed wool.

They also decorated their spindles with markers. I hope that this inspires them to keep using them, and they also came out beautifully.

Decorated spindles from the kids

Some of them decorated the shafts too.

I gave mine a bit of decoration too.

We didn't actually get to much spinning today, but I hope that they got some of the basics of how to spin the spindle and what makes yarn. We will pick it up again in two weeks, and I hope that they can do something neat with it.