October's A&S gathering featured spinning with drop spindles. Here are photos from that session, along with Mistress Lia's handout.

Until the 13th century in Europe, all spinning was done on a hand spindle. Even after the introduction of the spinning wheel, the use of the hand spindle was widely employed as it was far cheaper and far more portable than a spinning wheel. Women walking to market, spinning from a hand spindle as they did so, was a common sight even past the time of the Renaissance.

Hand spindles are classified either as a "top whorl" or "bottom whorl" type, the "whorl" being the spindle weight attached tot he staff to give the spindle momentum, to provide attachment of yarn, and to anchor the growing thread. This clever device is of great antiquity, dating back to at least Neolithic times, invented no less than 7,000 years ago, and probably in use earlier than that. Manuscript evidence of the Middle Ages suggests that in Western Europe spinners used the "bottom whorl" drop spindle type, which we will be using. Personas of earlier or more exotic origins might want to seek out other types of spindles. For instance, a tool kit in a Viking woman's grave sight had two top whorl spindles of different sizes, and a somewhat smaller bottom-whorled spindle that might well have been a supported spindle (i.e., spun within a cup).

The most popular fiber to spin today is wool, and although wool was very important in the Middle Ages, flax/hemp exceeded wool production simply because linen was so necessary a cloth. Children were taught to spin with tow flax as their crude first efforts would at least be useful in weaving into feed sacks and the like. But today the great flax fields of the past are gone (alas!), but I have found the fiber is stiff, clotted (thus hard to draft), and smells nasty! Clean, well prepared wool is pleasant to spin. If too much of the wool lanolin has been washed out, the fibers will feel "dry" and may be more difficult to spin. If you run into this difficulty, just make a solution of 1 part olive oil: 2 parts water, and spray a fine mist on the wool.

The begin spinning, tie on a leader yarn long enough to wrap under the whorl once and extend a reasonable distance beyond the top of the spindle shaft. Holding the wool in your left hand, guide the first few fibers onto the end of the leader yarn, and give the spindle a clockwise twist. Use your right hand to control the play of the wool fibers from the draft (don't let the twist actually get up into the fiber supply of the draft!) and to give the spindle more twists as needed so it does not reverse direction and undo your work!

Once you have a sufficiently long thread, hold it taut and unhook your yarn from the spindle. Wind the yarn around the shaft, beginning at the junction of the whorl to the spindle shaft. Eventually you will get a cone of handspun (a "cop"), with as much of the yarn near the whorl as possible. This will add momentum to the whorl for spinning.

As your draft begins to run out, add more prepared wool, connecting fiber to fiber. Donot add to spun yarn – your join will not be stable if you do (in fact, you'll probably have to tie your yarn to the leader before winding it on the spindle for this very reason). If your thread breaks while spinning (does anybody's not do so?). Push open the fibers at the ends of the threads to make a little fluff of wool before spinning the wool back on.

Now you are spinning!

Hey . . . . SOMEbody's cheating!

Resources:
Rachel Brown. The Weaving, Spinning, Dyeing Book, 2e. 1983, Knopf.
Peter Fowler. Viking Sails. In Spin-Off, Vol 25 (2) Summer 2001. (Spin-Off magazine in general is a great resource!)
Lee Raven. Hands on Spinning. 1987, Interweave Press Inc.