Medieval Images- Using Drop Spindles

In all of these images, the spinners are using drop spindles and distaffs.

Ancient Images of Spinning

People have been spinning flax for thousands of years. The first image is Egyptian, the other four, Greek. All figures are depicted using drop spindles, and the Grecian women are also using distaffs. Click on individual images to see enlarged versions.

Textile Tools – Teasel

Before wool can be spun it is necessary to comb, or card, it to align the fibers and remove knots and debris. Today that job is done very efficiently by machine, but before mechanization, of course, it had to be done by hand. Wool cards are steel brushes that look very much like [...]

Fiber Folklore – Sun, Moon, and Talia

It’s a shame that many kids today aren’t familiar with the famous, classic fairy tales. Now that I’ve lived a good many years, I often recognize connections and underlying meanings in the stories I learned as a little girl. Many of them involve spinning, flax, and wool, in one way or another. Here is an [...]

Fiber Folklore – Hateful Flax Spinning

Here’s a little known story about flax from The Brothers Grimms’ first edition of Kinder und Hausmärchen [Household Stories] (1812).
Hateful Flax Spinning
In former times there lived a king who liked nothing better in all the world than having flax spun. The queen and his daughters had to spend the entire day spinning, and he was [...]

Textile Terms: Happy St. Distaff’s Day

In centuries past, January 7th, the day following Epiphany, the twelfth day of Christmas, was known as St. Distaff’s Day. It was not really a holiday, nor is there really a “St. Distaff”. But the marking of this day by common people indicates the importance of spinning in the days before the [...]

Ancient spindle whorls

Collection of bronze age stone whorls unearthed at Egnazia, an excavated Greco-Roman city and necropolis in Southern Italy. The largest one is evidently a weight of some type.
Egnazia

2008 CT Sheep, Wool, & Fiber Festival

This festival continues to grow, and this year it was held Saturday, April 26. Very well attended, lots of activities, workshops, and shopping, shopping, shopping. My friend Lisa accompanied me, and as the photo illustrates, had a great morning. We were excited to find an Ashford spinning wheel priced lower than online, already assembled [...]

Spinning: Carding Beautiful Blends

This morning while checking out the new Spring issue of Knitty.com, I hit upon this great spinning article in the archives. Besides dyeing, there’s another way to make beautiful painted yarns. Following are step-by-step [...]