If you'd like I'll set my flax wheel up and take some images so you could see it. But you can spin wool, hemp, cotton, flax anything on a decent spindle or a not decent spindle LOL. We did everything on spindles for thousands of years. Low tech and very dependable. Oh but the wheels are just delicious works of art. I have a couple large production wheels that are just wonderful to feel move with you as you make thread. Very soothing type of work.I will save all my large Stalks... Let u know when I have a good collection ... now I'll go learn to spin me some wool! Hahahaha Knitting never worked out for me... but saving the planet one stalk at a time - is very appealing! - makes me wanna Learn New Stuff!
This is a good place to start for general info on it and lots of videos etc....
http://joyofhandspinning.com/
Oh and I spin mostly fine for weaving and lace. For example this is a merino fleece I just purchased:
After you wash it it looks like this:
Since this is a knitting project I'm carding it. If it were for weaving I comb it.
You take the rolags to the wheel and you spin them at 1/2 the diameter of the fiber you are going for. In this case I want roughly very fine so there ya go:
When I finally have enough plied and set this will be knitted into the shawl below.
*shawl isn't mine but the rest of the images are mine and my equipment.