Trindle adventures

I'm entering a competition over on Ravelry where the requirement is to make a spindle from found, re-purposed or recycled materials.  I have been looking around the web at different types of spindles for a while and have been lusting after a trindle from trindleman on etsy for ages.  So I decided that I would try to make one myself.

I gathered up my materials.  A bamboo chopstick for the shaft, a paper clip for the hook, an old knitting needle and some beads for the arms, some nail polish from my days as a nail tech and some polymer clay that I'd bought nearly a year ago for sculpting.

First I sanded the chopstick till it was more or less round.  Then I cut the paperclip to size and drilled a small hole in the top of the shaft, glued it in place and re-bent it into the correct shape.

I then painted the shaft with black nail polish and gave it a good thick coat of glass gloss top coat to give it a nice finish.

 

Then I took my old 1.5mm knitting needle that I never use and cut it into equal lengths, gluing beads and silver charms from my huge stitch marker making stash to the ends to act as weights.

The next step was building the centre of the whorl.  I formed a basic disc from polymer clay for this trindle because its pretty much a prototype and to be honest, I was feeling a bit lazy.  If I make another trindle I think I'll try and use something that has a bit more weight to it for the centre piece.  I had to do a bit of math to find the exact centre for drilling a hole for the shaft and the arm spaces.

Part of the competition is that I have to submit a small sample skein of yarn that has been spun on the spindle so that was my next step after all the glue dried.

And here is my result.  A home made 20g trindle that actually works :oD  I'm calling this a success.