Spinning machine

I'm very proud of myself: I made a "charkha" this morning:

It works really well. It's much faster and easier to spin cotton on the bobbin winder than on any other of my spindles or wheels. Attaching a bobbin and a quill makes it a real spinning machine! I'm sure you can spin any short fibers with it.

The bobbin is from Ashford. I use them as storage bobbins for my spun singles, and I also have bigger ones from Schacht. Many of you may have bobbin winders and bobbins, so start making you own spinning machine! The quill can be anything that fits into the bobbin and has one sharp end. I made mine from a piece of wood I had lying around, only needed my beloved Swiss army knife to fix it. You can finish it with sandpaper if you want, I didn't, as you can see. It works splendidly anyway.

Off to Twitter to boast. I already did on Ravelry and Facebook :D