I did remember to look it up on Google, and then, when I learned what a Turkish Spindle is, I thought to myself, “How wonderfully clever! I bet that Brio would work perfectly!” This has been my project of the day. Actually, this has been my project of the afternoon, because it all went very quickly.
It seems that all of the Turkish Spindles I saw online were bottom drops. This one is a top whorl, drop, and it works fine. My goal was to spin a center pull ball, not to be historically accurate. If I wanted to be historically accurate, would I be using Brio Mec?
I only spun a little bit of fluff, just to test it out, and lo and behold, it actually does make a center pull ball! How cool is THAT???
First, I spun a bit of singles, took the spindle apart, then I used the center pull ball make a 2 ply with, plying from the inside and the outside of the ball. The plying step resulted in a neat, tidy, little center pull ball of ready-to-knit-YARN! It was really easy, too! Yippee!
My only problem is that now, I want to zip it out onto my niddy noddy and wash it. This sort of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?
I wonder if this would work for a really big bit of fluff, so that I can actually spin up a skein? Hmmm…. Back to the drawing board. Or, rather, back to the toy box!
…I turn my back for the tiny bit of time it takes to make a tostada, and LOOK – kitty intereference!
Here you can see the spindle, in all it’s naked glory. The arms are wedged into place with a bit of beading elastic, but in the meanwhile, I tried it with a small rubber band, and it works perfectly well.
Brio Mec is a child's building toy. Mine are really old, and they've seen lots of use. I have lots of ideas for cross arms, but none of my ideas can be put together in the two minutes like this Brio Spindle was! I do push the arms down from the top, and they don't quite fit - the hole is larger than the shaft, hence the need for some traction! With a tapered shaft, one would also have to taper the holes in both arms - too much work for me! I had the shaft, I had the Brio, I had the desire, I didn't want to go to the store!!! Anyway, dowels don't come in an infinite variety of diameters, so the next size up would be much larger and the rubber band is a very easy solution. If you cruise down my blog, you'll see Navajo Spindles made out of Arrows and Stroller wheels - these are wedged into place with elastic, too. (In that case, it was the elastic band which holds two ear plugs to each other, so that you can hang them around your neck. Hey, this elastic band was in the workshop... I was in the workshop... use what you can!) Laziness is the mother of invention!!!
ReplyDeleteHoley smokes, there you go again! Very cool invention - makes me wish I had some building toys in the house. My turkish spindle cost $$.
ReplyDeleteYour daughter's purse is brilliant, btw.