I just started saving them (at the request of my 6 year old granddaughter), and they are collecting fast!

My grand kids love to build with them. I have bought them the lincoln log sets and they ad the spools to them to have more variety to build with.

I love your Christmas decorations! You gave me an idea to make one to put on my pull string for the ceiling fan in my sewing room!

I give mine to the school near me. Also egg cartons.

Love all the ideas. My uncle used to make end tables, etc out of the wooden ones. He put a metal rod or wooden dowel thru the middle to strengthen the legs. I have a big tub of all kinds and sizes so one day I will get them out and play.

You can string together to make dolls or clowns. I remember my older sister would collect them, paint them and they would be clowns with a ruffle around the neck and ankles. For the head, she would use a large wooden bead on which she would draw a face and then put a conical hat to finish it off.

Here's an interesting use: at a Christmas fundraiser, I bid on and won a cookie jar filled with "Amish Sugar Cookies." They were round with the most interesting raised flower. Turns out, to make the flower, after rolling the dough in colored sugar, you press the end of a large plastic spool (the kind with a hole and "spokes") in the sugar and then lightly on the cookies, then bake them... they were delicious and pretty, too!

I thought about it for a while...last night I ended up with and empty spool finishing up a UFO from 2010 and thought I could make a binding buddy out of this. All I used was a long piece of red yarn from my Raggedy Ann makings, threaded it through the spool, taped the binding on the spool using masking tape, rolled the binding on it, and hung it around my neck. To my delight and surprise it made adding binding super easy!! It took me half the time it normally does.