Andrea Mielke Schroer and her favorite French spindle

 

The Wisconsin Spin-In in Waukesha has brought fiber folks together each year since 1974. The day includes a style show, fiber arts gallery, vendors, and a wide variety of workshops. Andrea Mielke Schroer will be sharing her love of spindles in her workshop "A Dozen Spindle Spinning Tips." I asked Andrea to share one of her favorite spindles with us.

"My current favorite spindle is an old French spindle gifted to me by Marcy Moffet. It looks like a stick or a piece of kindling to the untrained eye, but I love it. It has an incredible patina that only comes with generations of use-the barely discernible decorative lines, the spiral groove at the top, the chattered area directly below the spiral nicked by the spinner's fingernails as many hundreds of yards of yarn were spun indicate an overwhelming amount of unspoken history that I will never know. But I get to hold it, spin with it, and love it for another generation, tying history to the present and the everyday."