(no subject)

[darchildre]

A while ago, I bought some medieval-style spindle sticks and a stone whorl from this etsy shop. Spindle sticks are fun because can fill up one and then just pop the whorl off the stick to keep spinning on another one. I enjoy spinning with mine, though I eventually decided that the whorl I had purchased was a little too light for my preferences.

So, last week, I bought a new whorl from a different etsy shop. It arrived today and is very pretty but I realized that I had been very stupid and not paid attention to the circumference of the hole in the whorl that the stick fits into. The new whorl will fit onto my spindle sticks, but not in such a way that I can use it as a top whorl spindle, which is my general preference.

But I have it now, so I figured I'd give it a try as a bottom whorl. Which worked fine, but I realized that I was winding on the way I've seen people do for supported spinning. I have tried supported spinning - I've got a wee bowl for it and everything* - but had never actually managed to get anywhere with it. But I figured, hell, why not? And got the bowl out to see if I could make it work with my spindle stick and the new whorl.

And, okay, I am not good at supported spinning yet and I'm probably not doing it right (people in instructional videos all seem to be able to draw one handed and I can't do that at all) but I am now apparently capable of doing a sort of spinning that allows to sit comfortably in my chair rather than the perching a suspended spindle requires. And that's pretty exciting!



*It is a wee pottery bowl that belonged to my mom before I stole it.

Comments

[james]

Yay it's always exciting to learn how to do new crafty things.

[brideoffrankenstein]

I tried spinning once but I could never get the hang of it - this sounds so cool and impressive.

[darchildre]

It took my something like five different iterations of "I'm going to learn to spin!" over several years after I bought my first spindle to actually get the hang of it, and I've tried to teach other people who were interested and none of them ended up taking to it at first either. I think it's one of those things that there's a knack to the motions, and you can't rush the acquiring of the knack.

And of course, then you get it, and the next thing you know, you own an increasingly worrying number of spindles. Though that may just be me.