Saturday, August 12, 2017

Period spinning methods

I have been trying to learn how to spin in a more period way off and on for ages.  Today as I was researching something else entirely, I came across a fantastic video showing one approach in slow motion!  Yay!  You can see it here at the 15thcenturyspinning blog.  She demonstrates a method of in-hand spinning that looks like the artwork and make a very good and well reasoned argument against modern drop spinning being using in period (in this case 15th century Europe).

I'm pretty excited about trying this out.  I think her method will work well with the reproduction spindle whorls and sticks that I have, which don't tend to spin as long and also don't (usually) have hooks or notches.  This makes using modern methods difficult, and once I add in a distaff I'm pretty much a mess.

So in addition to never-ending hemming (see my last post), mundane job hunting, and a new project for an upcoming class (more on this later) I'm pretty excited.