I've been waiting to show you this

I love spinning.  I love spinning with spindles.  I love drop spindles and I love supported spindles.  A few weeks ago I made a spindle from a clay whorl from Gambia (I think that's where it was from).  While I was spinning with it, I suddenly thought, what keeps me from making my own whorl.  I had a tub of clay that I've been using for another project so I got it out and started playing.

First I made one that was sort of oblong, another was square and then I found some cutters and came up with these:

With the round one, I did a little design before it dried all the way and I did a little something on the tip of the flowers but I haven't done any other decorating.  I need to get some paint to play around with now.  I love the retro look of the layered flowers.  They all spin reasonably well but I still need to finish the tops so I can spin of the end. 

Next I'm going to play around with adding some beads to the clay but I'll need to get some varnish or something first so the beads can be set into the clay.

In the meantime, I'm going to get started spinning.