Get your drills out!

What do you do when the weather is atrocious, your husband is away and your daughter is playing on the Wii? Yes, you lock yourself in the shed, avoid a disaster - we had some bad storms last night and had I not been in the shed, the place would have flooded - and make stuff.
We had already raided the local DIY store for some spindle essentials, so while I let wee H know she could do ONE more game, I took out my big drill and set to work. Of course, the workmate was buried under a load of junk in our shed, so I had to fudge it a bit. Same with the mitre saw, the darn thing is always missing when I need it. But luckily the dowel wood was soft enough for me to just pinch it.
So, starting with this:

I ended up with two large and two small ones of these:

One of the big ones is already in use, and I'm getting a lot better at his hand spinning business. It definitely helps if you have a proper spindle, in stead of an improvised one made out of a pencil and CDs... ;)
I'm now looking into how I am going to dye the resulting yarn, I would like to use some natural type of dying aid, such as elder... Any tips are welcome! But first, get enough singles to plie into some yarn! I've 'already' got around 20 grams, so this will take some time...