I was taught how to spin in the spring of 2009. Anyone who has tried drop spinning will probably tell you that while it is not too difficult to learn the basics, it takes practice to become proficient at spinning a consistent thread. I have been spinning every day since Isabelle and Aife showed me how to "park and draft."
At the same time I was learning to spin I was reading everything I could get my hands on about textile artifacts and spindle whorls. Some of my favorite books are "Prehistoric Textiles," "Women at Work: the First 20,000 Years," and "The Mummies of Urumchi," all by Elizabeth Barber; and "Ancient Danish Textiles from Bogs & Burials," by Margrethe Hald (a bit dated, but full of statistics and great photos). Reading about archaeological digs got me thinking - was it possible to tell if the spindles found in the graves were used to spin the thread for the cloth in the graves? Nothing I read even hinted at an answer to this question. I decided to develop my own experiment.
Thus began a year long project to determine the production capacity of drop spindles.
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