FREE Drop Spindle
spinning instructions with every
drop spindle order!
"Traditional
Style" drop spindles from Spinners Choice are hand
turned from exotic woods and well balanced. We produce our spindles in
limited quantity and with lots of attention to detail. Our drop spindles
are a joy to use when spinning wool
or other fibers and are little pieces
of art. Choose from top or bottom or small or medium size drop spindles. After you have tried our drop spindles, you will be back for more!!! Each drop spindle is tested for
quality and performance before we send it out to our customers. Each spindle
is unique
Red
Heart drop spindle offers a deep
red coloration and a nice luster as well. $26.95
Small Top
Small Bottom
Medium Top
Medium Bottom
Zebrawood
drop
spindle has attractive high contrast grain. This beautiful wood is from
West Africa. $26.95
Paduak drop spindle has a deep
orange-red coloration. padouk is an exotic wood from West Africa.
$26.95
Pau Amarillo drop
spindle offers natural cheerful yellow coloration combined with soft pearl
like sheen. A beauty! $26.95
Exotic
Mahogany Drop Spindle is a
favorite among spinners. Nice reddish brown wood. $26.95
Purpleheart drop spindle has intense
deep purple
color
and soft pearl like sheen. $26.95
AmericanBlack
Walnut Drop Spindle offers a classic medium brown coloration.
$26.95
Ashford
Turkish Drop Spindle
Ashford brings you this drop spindle that allows you to wind
a center pull yarn while you spin. Simply wind your yarn around the
crossbars. Slip the bars out when you are done spinning and you have your
ball already wound for you. This makes spinning yarn easy! Bottom whorl unfinished spindle weighs about 1.5
ounces.
Light Weight
Drop Spindle
Extra Value Priced drop spindle! Spindle with great balance
for fast and fine spinning. Weighs just under one ounce. Choose from top or
bottom whorl. Unfinished Drop Spindle can be used as is or stained and
painted in your favorite colors.
Beginner's
Drop Spindle
Extra Value Priced Drop Spindle! Basic drop spindle for
beginning and advanced spinners. Choose from top or bottom whorl. Teach
yourself or a friend how to spinning with a drop spindle with this nifty little tool. Unfinished
Drop Spindle can be used as is or stained and painted in your favorite
colors.
NEW!
Schacht Hi-Lo Drop Spindles
Schacht's popular dropspindles just got better. The new Schacht Hi-Lo Spindles offer the
best of both whorls: a brass hook atthe top for
high-whorlspinning and a groovedshaft for low-whorl spinning. Two sizes offer a broad spectrum of
spinning capabilities: 3" (2.2 ounces), and 2" (1.1 ounces). Maple.
Louet Sheep Drop Spindle
Drop Spindle from Louet with fun sheep design is perfect for
beginning spinners or for spinning medium yarns! Watch the sheep twirl and
have fun. Choose from top whorl spindle or bottom whorl drop spindle.
Schacht Pear Tahkli
Supported spindle with a brass shaft and pear shaped maple
wood whorl. For fine spinning.
Free spinning
instructions with
every drop spindle order!
Key Benefits of
"Spinners Choice" Drop Spindles
Well balanced, for easy spinning
Beautiful selection of exotic and domestic hardwoods
Top or bottom whorl
Brass hooks
Finely finished whorls
Wide weight range
Teach yourself how to spin:
Here's a link for FREE instructions:
Drop Spindle spinning is an ancient tradition. Drop
spindles were used to produce handspun long before Ulysses sailed to Troy.
The oldest handspun weaving fragments found to date were unearthed in
Turkey and dated to more than 8,000 years ago. Handspun sails with yarns
from drop spindles caught the winds of the Mediterranean for the
Phoenicians and the Romans. They carried the ships of the Vikings to far
horizons, Cortez to Mexico, Pizarro to Peru. Now let these little drop
spindles carry you to new horizons as well. From Spin, Span, Spun, Bette Hochberg
Drop Spindles
Many spinners start out with a drop spindle, a bit of
fiber and the willingness to learn the art of spinning wool. Others skip the drop
spindle in favor of a spinning wheel, with which you can spin much
faster…. but wait a minute? Spin faster?… Who needs speed anyways,
hand spinning is all about creating, loving what you do, and having fun.
Hand spinning is a creative outlet, allowing us to literally “spin our
dreams” into thread. Create unique fiber blends, color combinations and
yarn textures. You are the designer and the master of your own yarn. Only
your fantasy and the sky is the limit when it comes to spinning wool and
fiber. The yarn you spin is yours by
design!
And what about the countless times you could not take
your spinning wheel with you? It was too big, to heavy or just not worth
it. Ever heard of any one bringing their spinning wheel to spin on the
bus, at the doctor’s office or during meetings? Well, a drop spindle
will let you recuperate this lost time, thus making up for speed.
Drop spindles also connect us with the past, thus spinning with this
simple tool will in effect continue the thread of time that binds us to
our ancestors. Just think of the thousands of years in which hand spindles
provide the only way to obtain clothing from fibers. This simple device
created every bit of yarn from coarse linen thread for sails, so that
ships could explore the oceans, to the finest silks for royal robes. Since
spinning wheels did not appear until the middle age, the drop spindle was
one of the most important tools on hand. Everyday clothing, table linens,
tapestry and embroidery yarns, everything was spindle spun.
Spindles come in a wide array of designs, weights and
sizes. Keep in mind the lighter a spindle the finer yarn you can spin,
meaning a heavier spindle (3 to 4 ounces) is most suitable for thicker
yarns. Here a just a few of the spindle types available:
Bottom whorl spindle, most popular of all spindles,
can vary in weight and designs. Many beginners start with a relative heavy
(2 ounces or more) bottom whorl spindle, but you can also learn easily on
a top whorl.
Top whorl spindle, some spinners prefer these, since
with a little bit of practice the top whorl spindle can spin a lot faster
than a bottom whorl, thus putting more twist in your yarn.
Turkish spindle, also called cross arm spindle this
tool will let you wind your yarn into a ball as you spin. Pull out the
cross arms when you are done and presto! You have a center pull ball.
Navaho spindle, traditional used for Navaho spinning.
This is a supported spindle suitable for relatively coarse yarns and
fibers. Navaho spun yarns are spun twice. In the first stage the fiber is
soft spun, meaning just a little twist is allowed to hold the fibers. In
the second stage this fiber is re-spun resulting in the final yarn
Support spindle offers a bead or disk shaped whorls.
Taklis are used for extreme fine fiber spinning such as silk and cotton.
Often used with a spindle bowl.
All of our drop spindles are
handcrafted with care. We use various exotic and domestic woods that vary
in weight. For example a whorl 2.5” in diameter, turned in Oak is much
lighter than the same size whorl in Zebrawood. Some woods we use are dense
and heavy others lightweight to start with.
Generally, Oak and Cherry are light…Purpleheart, Redheart and Zebrawood
heavier. So it is almost impossible to stand in front of the wood lathe
and say: The next spindle in ABC wood will weight ABC. Each drop spindle
is different,
that’s what makes each spindle unique. There are not two alike!
E-mail us if you are looking
for a specific weight and we can let you know what’s in stock.
What spindle should I
choose?
Medium Weight Drop Spindles
Are you a beginner? Medium
weight drop spindles
are far better for beginners than light weight ones. Combined with a medium or coarse wool fiber,
they will offer a good start into the world of spindle spinning. Lighter
spindles will be too difficult to handle for most beginning drop spindlers. Medium weight
drop spindles are also great for plying or for
spinning wool and heavier yarns.
Light Weight Drop
Spindles
Great for spinning fine wools, silk and such. Make sure this is not your
first spindle though.
Top Versus Bottom Whorl Drop
Spindle
I personally prefer the top whorl spindles. They have
more momentum and will spin faster. That is however MY preference and
YOURS might be different. 95% of our drop spindle sales are top whorls.
Want
to know more about drop spindling? Here is a
link to Spindlers a yahoo-group dedicated to spindle spinning (and more) A
fun group to join and explore spindle spinning!
Learn how to spin yarn spinning with a drop
spindle.