A very simple but effective drop spindle can be made from some dowel sections, and for ease of use, a cup hook. Spindles like this are used all over the world (minus the cup hook) to spin all sorts of fibers. Designs similar are usesd to spin yak hair in the Himilayas, camel in Arabia, or any number of fibers. The originals were probably designed by cave people from three broken sticks...
Take the cup hook and screw it into the end of the longer dowel section. Then take the the two smaller sections and overlap them to form a cross shape... Use your leader yarn to lash them about six inches up the shaft of the drop spindle( Your longer dowel) in a catty-corner type lashing. Save some of the leader yarn to attach your fiber onto. It will look like this :
side view l l --long dowel l __l__ short dowel l
top view
l crossed short dowels __l__ l l
Take the leader yarn and flip it through the cup hook and attach your fiber to spin. As you spin and need to wind the yarn on continue to follow the catty corner lashing pattern. When the spindle is full, to remove the yarn instead of winding off, you just pull the small sections out, and pull the long dowel out..... Viola a nice ball of yarn..
To see how to spin with a spindle check out: http://mvcc.com/bu/lp/
Lili
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