An instructional video on spinning flax fibers using a handheld distaff, featuring traditional medieval tools and methods for historical fiber preparation and spinning.

Due to this structure and composition, the authors of the new paper deduce that the stones were likely used as spindle whorls — a hypothesis also supported by successfully spinning flax using ...

Re-imagining the Wheel Due to their size and the presence of whorls, the pebbles were likely used as an early version of a spinning wheel to gather up fibers like wool or flax and transform it into ...

Then they asked Yonit Kristal, a traditional craftsperson, to try spinning flax with them. “She was really surprised that they worked, because they weren’t perfectly round,” says Yashuv.

At one time, 18,000 acres of flax were grown in Oregon, with 14 processing mills, spinning and weaving throughout the Willamette Valley. They sold fiber straight to the war efforts, but those ...

After some practice, Crystal was able to successfully spin flax—and, with a bit more difficulty, spin wool—into yarn using the pebbles as spindle whorls. Illustrations representing various ...

The wheel, archaeologists largely agree, was invented around 6,000 years ago somewhere in Mesopotamia. Together with the axle it revolutionized human technological history and in time led to the ...

Due to this structure and composition, the authors of the new paper deduce that the stones were likely used as spindle whorls -- a hypothesis also supported by successfully spinning flax using ...