An obsession spanning both time and space.

I was relieved to read in the latest edition of Spin-Off that I'm not the only spinning obsessed person who is collecting spindle whorls. It's right there in black and white. Other people do it too. Martha Monsson's article "Touching Time," tells about her collection and shows them off. Apparently, she makes shafts for hers and actually uses them to spin.

I bought several whorls on eBay a couple of years ago from an antiquities dealer in Florida. According to the dealer they were from the middle east and about 2000 years old. I put a couple of them on leather straps and gave them to my spinning friends as necklaces. Of course, I kept one for myself and I wear it often. I usually don't share its history though because no one seems to believe me that it's 2000 years old. They all seem to think I was "taken" by a slick eBay dealer.

I was so happy to read in Martha's article that these whorls are as common as arrowheads among ancient artifacts and seldom sell for over $20. Of course, I haven't carbon dated my whorls, but I have no reason to believe that they aren't genuine.

I love to wear my whorl necklace and think it of it being used by a woman 2000 years ago to make thread for her family's clothes. It's a concrete link with women of the past and their daily tedious but important work.

So, here is a gallery of my collection to date. My hope is to collect whorls from every continent (except Antartica) and from a wide variety of time periods and materials. So far, I have spindle whorls of stone and clay. I've also seen them made of lead, glass, bone and bronze.

This is the first whorl I collected. It's made of black stone from the Middle East and about 2000 years old. It has a decorative circle around the center hole.

My oldest whorl is the Chinese Neolithic spindle whorl. It is stone and believed to be 4,000 to 4,500 years old.

The youngest whorls I bought recently in a lot. They come from South America and are early PreColumbian fired clay. Several of them have interesting markings.

Many thanks to Celine for encouraging me to post pictures of my treasures. Now I have to find a creative way to display them in my house!