spins

In preparation for wool Wednesday of summer fun camp next week, Marian and I made CD drop spindles, then Becci & I tested them (Marian chose kid play over mom play, imagine that...).
See my fine purple-and-white first attempt (my first use of the wool kool-aid dyed here--it's brighter than this 10 pm photo) on the crazy-good goat find Becci bought for us at the Newville library book sale. From the flyleaf of this 1965 book (handily stapled on the first page by library personnel 40 years ago): "Schnitzel, leader of a herd of yodeling goats, is on his way to becoming world famous. In The Sound of Music, a movie to be released about the time this book is published, Schnitzel appears in an appealing puppet sequence. At Thanksgiving, he was a feature of Macy's Parade. And at Christmas, Schnitzel was invited to entertain at a White House party for children. Through this book, Schnitzel and his Yodel Cheese are sure to make new friends among children all over the country."

After reading a couple of tutorials, we basically followed these instructions for making our CD spindles, but instead of the well nut, I just took my CD to the hardware store (Pague & Fegan, at 153 years the oldest hardware store in Pennsylvania) and found a channeled rubber grommet that fit 2 CDs stacked together and then a dowel the right size to squeeze into that. 2 CDs (free) + rubber grommet ($0.54) + 7/16" oak dowel ($0.99; I cut it in 1/3) + cup eye hook ($0.19). I found a fat lipliner pencil sharpener that fit our dowels, Marian sharpened them, and with brief use of a drill & a handsaw & some sandpaper, we had ourselves 3 neat little drop spindles (I made 2 CD ones and 1 with a wooden wheel) for very little. You can see all of our supplies out on the patio in the photo above. After a little perusal of the instructions available, I found the youtube videos done by Megan LaCore, and followed them. I thought she was very clear and also didn't drive me crazy, so she won.