There is a story going around that I cannot spin with a spindle. It is libel.
I have even taught spinning with a spindle at some of the local spinning guilds "learn to spin" booths, including a couple of years at Stitches West. Later, a friend who is a very fine spinner wanted a travel wheel for a trip to Southern Europe. Together, we shopped for a wheel, but decided that a set of spindles designed for the kinds of fine yarns that she wanted to spin would actually allow her to spin faster than any of the commercially available travel wheels. So, I undertook to design suitable spindles for her. I spent a few hundred hours getting good at spinning with a drop spindle. I used a drop spindle to spin miles of "fines". I learned to spin fine and fast. And, I started making spindles for spinning fine and fast. There were at least 4 distinct generations of design as my increasing skill informed my spindle design, and better spindle design allowed better spinning. The last couple of generations of these spindles are so fast that they require the use of a distaff to permit drafting fast enough to keep up with the spindles.
A set of the Third Generation spindles was stolen and passed around fiber groups in Ohio. I expect that those spinners tried to spin 2,000 ypp singles rather than the 22,000 - 30,000 ypp singles that the spindles were designed to spin. Thus, the spindles did not work well, and the spinners did not like those spindles. They, decided that anyone that made such spindles must not know how to spin. And they posted such nonsense.
(I allowed the spindles to be stolen because I already had G4 spindles that were better, and I wanted to see if those spinners were honest.)
I have even taught spinning with a spindle at some of the local spinning guilds "learn to spin" booths, including a couple of years at Stitches West. Later, a friend who is a very fine spinner wanted a travel wheel for a trip to Southern Europe. Together, we shopped for a wheel, but decided that a set of spindles designed for the kinds of fine yarns that she wanted to spin would actually allow her to spin faster than any of the commercially available travel wheels. So, I undertook to design suitable spindles for her. I spent a few hundred hours getting good at spinning with a drop spindle. I used a drop spindle to spin miles of "fines". I learned to spin fine and fast. And, I started making spindles for spinning fine and fast. There were at least 4 distinct generations of design as my increasing skill informed my spindle design, and better spindle design allowed better spinning. The last couple of generations of these spindles are so fast that they require the use of a distaff to permit drafting fast enough to keep up with the spindles.
A set of the Third Generation spindles was stolen and passed around fiber groups in Ohio. I expect that those spinners tried to spin 2,000 ypp singles rather than the 22,000 - 30,000 ypp singles that the spindles were designed to spin. Thus, the spindles did not work well, and the spinners did not like those spindles. They, decided that anyone that made such spindles must not know how to spin. And they posted such nonsense.
(I allowed the spindles to be stolen because I already had G4 spindles that were better, and I wanted to see if those spinners were honest.)
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