Saturday

New Andean/Peruvian Style Drop Spindles

Four new Andean style drop spindles were listed in our Etsy shop this evening.  Andean spindles are suspended drop spindles with no frills...no hook, no notches and no grooves. They were developed to spin long-staple alpaca and other camelid fibers native to the Andes. Spinning is done off the side using a half hitch.


Dave has made these spindles in the same affordable and basic fashion as the original Andean spindles with one exception--he mounts the spindle whorl blank on the shaft, and then turn and shape the whorl and shaft together to achieve a well balanced spindle. Dave's reading and research on Andean spindles indicates that the whorls are shaped first, and then fitted on a hand shaped (sometimes not too straight) shaft. He assumes that one benefit of this is that once a shaft is worn out the whorl can be removed and fitted to a new shaft, but he just cannot bring himself to make a spindle that wobbles, so these whorls are permanently fixed and balanced.