(re-post from November 20 2008)
An illustration in a book was my first introduction to a nostepinne; I understood that it was a means of handwinding wool into a ball but the fact of it being a center-pull ball escaped me and I had no idea how it was done; I thought it was pronounced nos – ta – pine and only much later discovered it is nosta-pinney. Time tends to fill in the blanks in life so eventually I learned how it was used.
Awhile ago I was standing in a church thrift shop with the middle item in the photo in my hand, staring at it and likely grinning. A woman approached and said, "Are you planning on making breakfast, then?" in that delightful accent that almost had me answering, "Oh, in a wee while," except I had no idea what she was talking about. "Isn't this a nostepinne?" I asked and then she looked totally confused. "It's for stirring your porridge,"she told me. "I thought it was for stirring – I mean winding – wool," I replied and she smiled at me – a bit nervously, I thought - and walked away.
Well, it 'stirs' wool into very nice balls.
Here is what it looks like in the final stages of winding.
It's not hard to do; google and choose from a wealth of information about methods and history etc.
Since an oatmeal porridge stirrer can make a fine nostepinne I assume almost anything with a tapered end could be used. The tool on the left is meant to strain fruit for jelly, isn't it? The pestle on the right works also but it a bit fiddly; the simpler the nostepinne, at least at its operational end, the better.
I tried winding some fine golden mohair on a chopstick to see if I could make tiny balls that might be used in greeting card making or perhaps jewellery and I think it could give a satisfactory product with some practice but I ran out of patience.