It’s a busy time at work for me. I’ve got lost of nuno workshops going on where I do have examples to show people but every time I think of another way of doing things I ending up creating more samples. Yes that’s great but it also takes a little time and as I started them all at once I haven’t finished them yet to show them off. However I thought I’d share a story with you of the drop spindle spinning kit I’ve been developing for Adelaide Walker.

Yvonne knew a man who could make some spindles for us and we thought we’d have a go at making up a kit for beginners. I rashly volunteered to write up instructions with the help of Hubby, after all I only have the two hands who else was going to take the action shots.

Faced with a blank sheet my mind went blank too and I did a quick search for instructions on the internet to see how to approach it. It seemed far more complicated than explaining how to make felt, I wanted to ensure there was sufficient information for people to understand what they were doing but not so much waffle that it was difficult to read.  I drafted out a quick plan of what were the essentials I needed to say and where I might need photo illustrations.

Hubby has never spun and so was the perfect person to ask to read the instructions and check them through. He was brilliant, he read it through and questioned lots of places, especially as he had no photos to help him at this point. Of course, you probably realised where this was going didn’t you? Yep, after checking them through I asked the poor man to have a go with a drop spindle. My own first drop spindle experience wasn’t a pleasant one, you could say the air turned blue and I got rather grumpy and fed up of picking the dratted thing up off the floor. I was taught to have a go whilst standing and I now think sitting would have been quite handy.

Hubby was brilliant and irritating in equal measures, let me explain. He has publicly stated that he has no desire or intention ever to spin and yet, for me, he was ready yet again to go the extra mile and give it a whorl (see what I did there, whirl, whorl). The irritating part was that he wasn’t half bad and did actually manage to spin some wool without major loss of temper putting my first attempts to shame. More importantly he proved that the instructions made sense and could be followed by a novice and then he went on to take some photos for the instructions. Yep, he’s wonderful and if his success has inspired any of you to have a go then kits can be bought at Adelaide Walker along with fibres for your next felting project!