Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Drop Spindles & Hand Dyed Rovings

After reading the article in Spin-Off Magazine this summer on building your own drop spindles, I knew I just had to try this as an assignment for my 3rd level 3-d kids. 
But first I knew I had to build one myself...
Oh boy.  But I was so busy getting ready to get back to school and get my classroom set up that I asked my husband Jim to give one a try first (below)
He looked like he was having so much fun with all the sawing, cutting and sanding that I just had to make the time to try one too (below)
I purchased 3 different hardwoods for the kids to choose from, oak, poplar and I forget the name of the other one, it will come to me LOL, and about seven different stain and wax choices.  You can see I'm already spinning yarn on my spindle above.  It actually works well  :)
So anyways, here are the results which I'm so thrilled about, including their hand dyed roving's they will be spinning both on their drop spindles as well as my spinning wheels.  Senior Kelsey Lee designed a lovely floral pattern, ...
and even put in some wood etched designs.  You can also see her different wood choices below.  And aren't her color ways in the roving's beautiful?
Senior Nandi Best also used 3 different woods and stains, wood burned all 3 pieces and then inlaid beads.  Wow!!!  I'm so excited by the results and can't wait to do this project again next year.  Maybe even make a couple more for sale. 
Happy Spinning Girls!
For EXTRA CREDIT tonight, on a piece of brown paper, cut out the shape of a drop spindle, and on the whorl section (the large part at the end) put your name and period on one side and on the other side put the name of the person's drop spindle that you admired the most from the ones shown above.

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