by Lili Pintea-Reed
Most people new to the fiber arts are vaguely aware that there are different types of spindles used for hand spinning. In very ancient times people simply tied a cord to a round rock and spun the rock to produce twist into the fibers, or spun them on her leg. Eventually, some female genius developed a way to spin a weighted stick and wrap the fiber upon it.
Like pottery, spinning and weaving most likely developed from basketry and was developed to produce cords that were more durable and longer than nature provided. Spinning allows one to take many shorter cords and turn them into much longer lengths.
Australian Aboriginal Women use these very ancient techniques.
The first spinners probably just rolled the fiber on their thigh adding new grasses as needed. The Maroi in New Zeland still spin wool and grasses this way. Peruvian women make grass ropes using this technique.
Since thigh spinning seems to be the first way to spin fiber into cord perhaps we can assume that the next type of spindle was the thigh spindles used to this day in such diverse areas as the Navaho (Deni) in the south west USA and the the Beudoin women of the NEar East. A thigh spindle is a long (often a foot or so) stick with a whorl on the bottom used to hold the fiber as it is wound on. The woman rolls the bottom against her thigh to spin fiber. Usually a heavy rug yarn is produced this way for rugs and blankets.
Bottom Whorl spindles appear to have developed from these. One can imagine some busy woman with no time to sit down started to carry her thigh spindle with her and learned to spin in the air using the weight of the whorl to balance the spin. Women all over the world still hand spin carrying her portable hand spindle twirling in the air as she walks and tends her children and animals.
Many variations of all of these exist. For good hand spinning links check out the hand spinners list site at: http://www.gorge.net/business/web/terisp...
More Hand spinning links and spindle suppliers at: http://home.netinc.ca/%7Erstowe/wlists.h...
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