Spinning, Animal Husbandry, Textiles

Supported Spindle Handspinning

Fine Weight Spinning for the Lazy Spinster
by THL Olwen of Buckland




One winter I made several attempts to spin wool fine enough for weaving something less than heavy blanket weight cloak with a fleece coarser than a high grade Merino of 60s or higher fineness. While spending several weeks recuperating from emergency surgery, I began to play around with supported spindles. Being housebound, too impatient for mail order, and too cheap to spend $25 or more on a single fancy spindle, I found my stash of roughly pencil sharpened dowel rods and toy wheels left over from the beginning spinning class I taught at last Pennsic. Using a small toy wheel and a nine or ten inch length of double pointed dowel rod, I futzed with a tuft of roving, spinning the small spindle on my lap, trying to draft out a fine thread from the puff of commercial roving. By spinning the dull point of the spindle on my leg and pulling out and away from the tip I found I could draft finely and spin a yarn as fine as a thick sewing thread. I found I could easily achieve a finer thread than I could spin on my Country Craftsman spinning wheel, which is a wheel designed to spin a fine thread. For under twenty five cents I had found a spindle that would spin a "cloth weight" wool yarn that was eminently portable and functional, plus I could spin and not have to play " chase the runaway spindle ", which is a real plus when coping with the delights of an abdominal incision.

History of Supported Spindles
Nearly all of the contemporary treatment of the history of spinning, once the technology is beyond the hooked stick stage, concentrates on drop spindle spinning, wherein the spindle is suspended by the just twisted yarn -- depictions of drop spindles occur on Egyptian tomb friezes and Greek pottery. Supported spindle spinning is known to have a long history in Asia, especially India, as it is a technique well suited to the fine spinning of cotton. Short fibers such as cotton are readily spun into a fine thread when the pull of gravity is less strongly exerted on the thread allowing a finer grist and a tight twist can travel up towards the drafting area. Most books written on modern handspinning techniques focus on the techniques of drop spindle spinning and treat supported spindles with a brief aside. To her credit, Lee Raven uses a supported spinning technique, no base bowl, in her book "Hands On Spinning " to teach the drafting process on the way to drop spinning.


A hypothesis of a greater prevailence of supported spindle spinning can be made for northwestern Europe during the SCA period due to archeological evidence of spindle whorls found in Viking, Norse and medieval excavations. While authors of contemporary spinning books have claimed that the low whorl drop spindle was the predominant style of spindle used in northwestern Europe, the archeological evidence provided by the artifacts is not so clearly cut. In the Coppergate digs in York the following spindle whorls were found:

#6571- diameter 27.1mm, thickness 20 mm, hole diameter 9.6mm, weight 18.2 g (12/13th century)

#6572- diameter 34.7mm, thickness 25.1 mm, hole diameter 11.2mm, weight 32.2 g (12th/13th century)

#6573 -diameter 28 mm, thickness 24.7mm, hole diameter 10.2 mm, weight 23.3 g (12th/13th century)

Please consult Textile Production at 16-22 Coppergate (Walton Rogers, 1997) for a complete listing.

In my field testing, whorls of these weights, around one ounce make excellent supported spindle whorls, but are problematic as drop spindle whorls, as the spindle is prone to reverse spin due to the low mass. Using this weight as a spun off the point supported spindle has a number of advantages. Speed of production increases as the spinster does not need to wind the thread on the arm or hand, remove the half hitch, then wind on, replace the half hitch and resume spinning. In spinning off the point with a supported spindle, the spinster lowers the angle of the drafting arm, unwinds a revolution or two and winds on the thread with the spindle propelling hand, spiral one or two revolutions up to the tip and resumes the spindle rotation and drafting.
Supported spinning is not limited to fine weight yarns, as a medium weight yarn for plying to a knitting worsted weight can also be easily accomplished. In Spin Off magazine, Summer 2001 issue, Peter Fowler suggests that some of the spindles found in Viking graves in Dublin would be best used as supported spindles also based on weights, spindle shapes and the no-half-hitch-is-faster theory.

Pictorial evidence
Pictorial evidence previously interpreted as depictions of drop spindle spinning can be viewed as evidence of supported spindle spinning with the absence of a base cup. (See Royal MS 20 CV, f.75) The woman in the bicornate hennin maybe spinning a spindle resting on the tiled floor from the distaff of combed wool stuck in her belt. This posture is both comfortable and productive, as we will explore later in this class. A sixteenth century engraving after the style of Pieter Brugel by Phillipe Gall " The Wise and Foolish Virgins" also depicts a woman handspinning from a freestanding wool distaff in posture that strongly suggests that she is spinning a supported spindle.


The next avenue suggestive of a larger role for supported spindle spinning is the thread count of fine woolen twills from the Late Dark Ages -- lozenge twill with a thread count of 22 by 20 threads per cm (55 x 50 threads per inch). A recent reconstruction of an Anglo-Saxon cyrtel by Joy Cain, Lady Gillian of Bloodwood, used 36 threads per inch in the warp. Although this yarn was spun on spinning wheel, a very lightweight or supported spindle is a preferred tool for spinning a yarn of this fineness. Accounts of trade regulations suggest that fine wool twills with a warp thread count of 60 ends per inch were a common enough trade item to cause such regulation.

Re-creating and using supported spindles

In Spindle Spinning From Novice to Expert by Connie Delaney, Ms Delaney gives a method very similar to the method I developed this winter: a nine inch pencil sharpened double pointed dowel and a toy wheel. I dispense with the glue and paint of her method and prefer a sanding or scraping to smooth the dowel and a tuft of fiber to secure a sloppy fitting whorl. Searching about the house for a spindle cup I found several cheap or free household items to use as a spindle cup: a sea shell, a bottle cap from a 2 L bottle, a pottery shard, a upended tea cup and the bottom of a full upended pop or beer can. Being emminently lazy I was also looking for a method of supported spinning that was easy to do while seated on a bench or straight chair. Enter the "longshafted support spindle" which has a shaft of 18" - 26" depending on personal preference and height of spindle cup. An eighteen-inch shaft works well with the bottom of a full-upended pop or beer can as the spindle cup, while a longer shaft works better with a depression in a rock as a spindle cup. You will need a spindle cup that is sufficiently massive and with enough bottom side friction that the cup will not be pushed about the floor or ground by the motion needed to rotate the spindle. The spindle cup for the long shaft is a convenience, but promotes more efficient spinning.



Bibliography

Barber, Elizabeth Wayland, Women's Work, and the First 20,000 Years. W.W. Norton and Company, 1994. ISBN 0-393-31348-4

Crowfoot, Elisabeth, Frances Prichard, and Kay Staniland. Medieval finds from excavations in London:4, Textiles and Clothing c.1150- c.1450. HMSO, 1992. ISNB 0 11290445 9

Delaney, Connie. Spindle Spinning From Expert to Novice. Kokovoko Press, 1998. ISBN 0-9660952-0-0.

Fowler, Peter. "Viking Sails" Spin Off Magazine Summer 2001, pg 76-78.

Hoffman, Marta. The WarpWeighted Loom, Studies in the History and Technology of an Ancient Implement. Robin and Russ Handweavers, 1996. ISBN 82-00-0894-3

Raven, Lee. Handson Spinning. Interweave Press, 1987.ISBN 0-934026-27-0

Recommended URLs:

http://home.insight.rr.com/cains/documentation/

http://www.ealdomere.sca.org/university/spindlespinning.shtml

http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/suevatheshort/spinning.html?mtbrand=AOL_US

http://kws.atlantia.sca.org/spinning.html

http://www.ydalir.freeserve.co.uk/spin.htm

http://www.interweave.com/spin/Spin_Off/Lo_Tech/index.cfm

http://www.florilegium.org/files/TEXTILES/textiles-msg.text

http://www.florilegium.org/files/TEXTILES/spinning-msg.text