While there are plenty of medieval images showing spinning with spindle and distaff, usually with the spinner shown in a position with the spindle hand/arm almost fully or fully extended, there's very little pictorial evidence for plying.

I've come across one image recently, though - this one:

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Bibliothèque Nationale de la France, Manuscript Latin 7330, liber astrologiae Georgii Zapari Zothori Fenduli, c 1301-1400. Fol. 30r, if I've interpreted things correctly. Permalink to the page in the digital BNF.


That lady is not using a distaff, but instead she's holding two filled spindles in her left hand, and plies the threads together with the spindle hanging below her right hand.

Now that's definitely a rare picture, and a method I do have to try! Anyone here ever tried plying this way already? Or do you know more pictures like this? (Or, while I'm already blegging, images of spinners not in the classical one-arm-fully-extended position?)