As this was something totally new I decided to do a bunch of reading before I actually tried to use the spindle. I looked up stuff on the internet and printed off the material recommended by Erin. I checked out the library and borrowed The Complete Spinning Book by Candace Crockett. I read through everything two or three times and checked out anything that didn’t line up (and learned a bit of extraneous stuff about raising sheep and the production of silk).

It turns out that spinning is one of those things that is terribly difficult to explain in type but really pretty easy to do - at a basic level.


The spindle Erin lent me is a Turkish spindle. The cross pieces fit together and slide over the top of the spindle until they stop on a thick part a little way from the bottom. This means that you can wind your yarn around the cross pieces as you are working and when you’re done you pull them out and you a have a centre-pull ball. Pretty nifty! I didn’t actually figure out how to do this but I didn’t have all that much yarn either so it didn’t really matter. I wound my yarn into a small skien when I needed to take it off the spindle and “set the twist” (got it wet and let it dry while hanging over a door knob).

The roving Erin lent me with the spindle was a wool-mohair blend which she said had a longer staple and would be easier to work with. It was a nice chocolate brown colour and turned into a lovely squashy thick yarn.


One of the things I found really neat about this was just how strong the yarn was once I made it. For all that my yarn is full of thick slubs and skinny bits I could still tug pretty hard without feeling any of the fibers move. It’s also a pretty relaxing thing to do. You stand and spin the spindle and feed the fibers into the twist as it climbs up the newly created yarn. I couldn’t manage to feed fiber and keep the spindle turning the right direction so most of the time I stopped it with my leg to prevent my yarn from unspinning as I was working. It’s really exciting to see the yarn grow - it doesn’t take long before the tip of your spindle touches the floor and you have to wind the yarn you’ve just made onto the spindle body and start again.

A warning though - everyone says this is addicting - believe them!

I finished spinning the roving and got it all wet and hung it over the faucet (to be moved to the door knob later) and just had to find something else to spin. It’s too neat - turning fluffyness into yarn. Then I remembered an article I’d read on Knitty while I was searching for spinning instructions. It was about spinning silk hankies (not the kind you wipe your nose with) and I had a couple of silk hankies. They were left over from Erin’s felting class the week before when we’d been allowed to take home some fancy extras to spice up our felting.

These are even more fun than the wool. You stretch out the fibers and set up the spindle and then just go. Joining the two lengths was easy too. It was amazing to watch the twist climb up the fluffy silk fiber and make this shimmery thread.


I decided to try plying my two yarns together just to see how it would go and what it would look like. I didn’t really have any specific instructions for plying except that I needed to turn the spindle opposite the direction I was turning it when I was spinning. My lack of further instruction could most easily be attributed to the fact that I was really excited about making the plied yarn and didn’t want to loose any time looking for instructions on how to do it.

There was only enough of the pink silk thread to ply with about a third of my wool yarn but I liked the way they looked when they twisted together.


I wanted to make something from my new yarns but I knew that it wasn’t going to be very big. I settled on a pattern from the current article of Knitty knowing I was going to have to make some alterations.

I began by weighing both yarns and marking the approximate middle point on each. I decided to use the plied yarn for the cast-on and bind-off edges with the plain brown for the rest. I cast on 56 stitches with 6.5 mm bamboo needles. This took me to just before my centre point marker on the plied yarn. I worked the pattern with the brown yarn following the instructions for the short rows (though I‘m not sure if I did the slipped stitches correctly) until I was close to my centre marker and then started to increase the rows again. As it turned out my centre marker was a bit off and I am short one row on one side of my head scarf. I just ignored the missing row and bound off my piece.

I finished it off by weaving in the tails and sewing on a button - I found a perfect little pink flower in my button box. It fits around my head quite well and I think will do a good job of keeping my ears warm on cool fall and spring days.