I was looking for wooden spools for winding my woolen embroidery threads and found a very cool set of vintage wooden spools with thread still on them on eBay.

The spools are quite large but I’m pleased. I don’t think I’ll keep the thread as it is old and old thread is not good thread generally. The outer layers of thread are badly faded and stained. You can see in the top left that I’ve unwound some of the blue and it’s nice underneath. Going to do a burn test on and see how it fares with my strength test too.

Mostly I just want to wrap my own wools on these, maybe several colors on each spool. This will be a nice touch to reenactment. While I don’t have much documentation for thread spools that are older than that 19th century, at least they are wood and metal instead of plastic. I’ve priced out cute little cutout thread winders but they are exorbitantly priced. These cost me $10 for all six. Instead of $5-20 for one in bone, shell, or wood.

Aren’t they cute???