Hand Spinning
Spinning is an ancient textile art in which plant, animal or synthetic fibers are twisted together to form yarn. For thousands of years, fiber was spun by hand using simple tools, the spindle and distaff. Only in the High Middle Ages did the spinning wheel increase the output of individual spinners, and mass-production only arose in the 18th century with the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. Hand-spinning remains a popular handicraft.
Characteristics of spun yarn vary according to the material used, fiber length and alignment, quantity of fiber used, and degree of twist.
Read more about Hand Spinning: Contemporary Hand Spinning
Famous quotes containing the words hand and/or spinning:
“Olivia. Is’t not well done?
Viola. Excellently done, if God did all.
Olivia. ‘Tis in grain, sir, ‘twill endure wind and weather.
Viola. ‘Tis beauty truly blent, whose red and white
Nature’s own sweet and cunning hand laid on.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“I claim that in losing the spinning wheel we lost our left lung. We are, therefore, suffering from galloping consumption. The restoration of the wheel arrests the progress of the fell disease.”
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948)