A spindle is not a wheel--Sleeping Beauty (story by Perrault, approx 1700) is generally shown pricking her finger on the *distaff* of a flax spinning wheel (a distaff is the small pole/cross that holds the fiber--most often prepared flax/linen--while the spinner draws out the fiber and feeds it onto the draw-spindle wheel). A distaff is not sharp, nor is anything else on the conventional spinning wheel. This is something I see in illustrations that always irritates me--why not get it right? The other thing is to show a woman riding sidesaddle on the wrong side, but, anyway... The pretty little European wheels were first adapted for flax/linen, but can be useful for wool, silk and even the short-fibered cotton.
But a hand-spindle typically as two sharp ends--it had to have been this that Perrault was writing about.
Now, the large wool-wheels seen often in antique shops in the US, also called "walking wheels" because the spinner is on foot, walking from side to side as she feeds the wool fiber onto a classic, dangerous sharp spindle instead of the fly-wheel of the more complex flax wheel. This walking wheel is awkward, primitive and miserable for anything but wool. I inherited one, but dislike using it. A hand spindle is easier than this wheel. The nice thing about the walking wheel is that it is easy to construct--but you don't see many of these in European spinnery.
The flax used to make the exquisite linens that survive ancient Egyptian times was spun into thread on hand spindles, an item every child and woman and even a lot of men wielded to amass the quantities of thread needed to make even a small amount of woven linen. You see many illustrations of these spindles in art books which photograph the walls of temples and tombs.
Hand spindles have been around as long as history. Nomads and bedouins to this day carry them and spin camel hair, while on the camel's back! To use a hand spindle, it is handy to stand on a stool (or sit on a tall camel) so that you have a little more distance between youself and the spindle, and can create a longer yarn before you have to stop spinning and wind the spun yarn onto the "stick" of the spindle.
Flax is a fascinating and useful gift to mankind. Fields of blue flowers, then the plant yeilds the seeds to make flour and oil, and the stalks processed into long flax fibers, to be spun into linen. The length of these fibers makes the spinning easy, even for a hand spindle.
A hand-spindle looks like something like a child's top--and it's nice when they're well-made. But I've taught many a child to spin wool with a pencil stuck into a potato.
Vocabulary associated with spinnery is feminine--"Spinsters" were unmarried relatives relegated to the unrelenting processing of fiber. And the "distaff" side of a room refers to the women. The holder of the flywheel on a flax-wheel is called "mother of all."
Twill is a weave, not spinning, and is not at all hard to accomplish with a tapestry-style loom that you also see in illustrations of ancient Egyptians.