I no longer wonder why spinners need display cases or large jars to hold all their spindles. Yes, I made another spindle today. I was supposed to do the filing. It isn’t hard to get distracted from that.

This spindle is an assembly of miscellaneous parts again, but it came together a little more smoothly. I had a leather edging tool and a dowel that fit perfectly in the center hole. I sharpened one end with a pencil sharpener, added a small brass screw eye, then opened it up with pliers to make the hook. To keep the whorl in place, I used a small rubber band. The whole thing can be taken back apart and repurposed if necessary too.

I wanted to try a top whorl drop spindle. I have no other excuse. Now my excuse for spinning immediately with it is that the cat sat on my lap and was sleeping, so I didn’t want to disturb her. (Good kitty!)

Ok, I admit, I’ve found myself searching the house for things to use as spindle whorls (the weighty thing on spindles that helps them spin longer). I wanted a lighter spindle, but one with enough oomph to still spin. I found an old button and a unused cabinet knob. I used a drill bit on the drill press to make holes in each item.

Then I needed a new shaft, so I repurposed a steel mandrel, which was used to make glass beads at one point in its life. I ground one end of the mandrel to a point, and flattened the other end with hammer. I used the band saw to cut a notch in the flat end to make a hook. Then I filed and sanded and sanded and filed until the hook wouldn’t catch on fibers.

I smoothed the hook with fine steel wool, then tested the spindle by, wait for it, spinning the steel wool. Because… why not? I used the resulting yarn (wire? cable?) to further smooth the inside of the hook.

I then tested with cotton balls, which went MUCH better than the heavier supported spindle for me. I did have to go back and file and sand the hook again because, surprise, cotton is more delicate than steel wool.

I am going to continue to use a small rubber band to keep the whorl from slipping off the shaft, so that I can trade out whorls. The knob and shaft weigh in at 1.38 ounces, and the button and shaft are a lofty 0.81 ounces.

My little ceramic dish was OK for supported spindle spinning, but most of the support bowls I’ve seen (yes, on web searches and YouTube videos), are nice little round concave weighty things. Some are quite pretty! But I did notice that the bottom of an aluminum can is about the same size and shape.

I cut off the bottom of two aluminum cans with a utility knife, then neatened the edge of one with a scissors. (My kitchen scissors actually have a tiny serration, which makes the edge of the aluminum not so sharp.

Using pliers and a half-twist motion, I crimped the edge of one can bottom. This helps it fit inside the other can bottom nicely. I learned this technique from a video where they used aluminum can bottoms to make toy car wheels. Cool. This is also how I made my first whorl.

I then filled the crimped side with used play dough, and pressed the two halves together. My play dough is an off brand and quite sticky, so I didn’t do anything else to get the two sides to stick together.

The cleaned up the print on the bottom of the can with some fine steel wool and now my support bowl is ready for use!

You know that big wad of cotton that is stuffed in the top of vitamin jars? I don’t see it as often anymore, I guess manufacturers are getting better at making tougher capsules that can withstand shipping, but there was a double dose of cotton in one of the last bottles we purchased. It usually heads to the trash with the bottle seals and packaging. But not this time. I picked it up and thought: “Can I spin this?”

So I meandered over to YouTube and flipped through a couple videos. Cotton is a short staple fiber, and I’d read that drop spindles are usually too heavy to spin cotton (I only had a drop spindle, and a fairly big one at that). I saw a video on how to spin cotton balls on a pencil. I tried that, but with a large knitting needle, but didn’t have much luck.

I saw a few more videos of people using supported spindles. So I made one. Well, really I Frankenstein’d one together. I took a metal afghan hook (because these are fairly easy to come by, and crochet hooks usually have a flat bit in the middle), and cut off the end and sharpened it with a belt sander. Then I took the whorl off the first spindle I made (which was made of the bottoms of two aluminum cans and some playdoh), and drilled the hole large enough to fit my new afghan hook shaft. I used a small ceramic dish as my support bowl.

This setup worked better, but I did have some fits and starts. Turns out the aluminum can whorl is heavy, putting the total weight for this spindle at over two ounces. Yikes! That is even heavier than my Turkish spindle. But I muddled through and was able to produce a single ply yarn.

I used my Turkish spindle to chain ply the single into a three-ply yarn. (It turns out that I can use this as a supported spindle as well because of how I made it. Oh well, sometimes I get caught up in an idea.) Then, because it was such a wee bit of yarn, I crocheted a small motif. Because… why not?