This is a Turkish Spindle. Plain and simple. Its functionality is the same as any other spindle, but the design is wholly unique. The premise of this tool is that instead of winding the new yarn up the spindle's shaft, you wrap it cross-wise through the bars of the whorl, while rotating the spindle shaft after each wind. The result is something really f*cking cool - a finished ball of yarn! To 'extract' the ball, you first push out the spindle shaft, from top to bottom; then, the narrow cross bar comes out, and then finally the larger cross bar. This spindle comes apart into three distinct pieces, with the narrower bar sliding inside of a groove cut into the middle of the larger bar.

My Turk is photographed here with a 100 gram 'bump' of mill combed Llama hair (purchased from a friend of mine, who raises the animals at her local farm). The ball that I have wrapped around the spindle arms is, of course, Llama, as are the three other balls arranged behind the spindle.