Then I sold my Traditional. Now with only two wheels, it cut the decision making down a little. But I still wasn't sure I even truly wanted a Woolee Winder. Then one of the women in my knitting group brought in her espinner with a Woolee Winder for someone else to try. After seeing the Winder in action and talking to her about it, I decided to make the plunge and get one, but I still needed to decide which wheel. After reading a bit on the Ashford forum on Ravelry, it seems like with the Joy, the Woolee Winder doesn't fit when it is folded up and in the bag and people carry the Winder separately. Since I do like the sliding hook flyer (and the bobbin size) on my Joy and I don't want to have to carry the Winder separately, I decided to go for one for my Traveller.
I wasn't sure how long it would take to get the Winder. But not too long after I placed my order, I received an email about my order--they wanted to make sure that they got the right one to me so asked a couple of questions about my wheel (in particular the whorl). After we determined which type of Traveller I had, I got a shipping notice. Excitement! I checked several times a day until I saw the expected delivery date. On that day, I listened and listened for the mailman (always come mid to late afternoon) and when I heard him, I waited at the door until he got to my house and then met him halfway up my driveway (I think I surprised him!).
Although I had several editing jobs on my desk, I wanted to take the Woolee Winder for a spin. So I opened the box, pulled out the beautiful piece of equipment, and grabbed my wheel. I took off the flyer and went to put on the Woolee Winder. Oh no! I forgot one important bit: I had ordered the larger size of Woolee Winder but the place where the orifice of the flyer sits on the wheel was set up for a standard size flyer. I quickly jumped to my computer and found the part I needed (just $2.95). Too bad I didn't still have my Traditional as I had a jumbo flyer for it so would have had the right part.
Then it was time to wait for the mail again. Yesterday the part arrived. Once again, I dropped everything and got my wheel out. I added the new part and then tried the Woolee Winder again. It fit perfectly. Well, almost perfectly. The big wooden knob that is used to adjust the tension gets in the way if it is unscrewed too much (and it looked like where I needed the tension set was right where the flyer would hit that knob). I was eventually able to remove the knob part but kept the screw and used a pair of pliers to adjust the tension (I'll have to figure out something else later).
So I started spinning. I had a single that was all ready to be chain plied so that's what I loaded onto my lazy kate. It took a while to get the tension right (and I kept adjusting it quite a few times), but I was spinning. And the Woolee Winder was working just as advertised. But I ran into a snag. Apparently I had overspun the single and there were some really tight corkscrews in there. With the combination of trying to find just the right tension and trying to get those corkscrews out, it was not quite the pleasant spinning experience I wanted. But in the section that weren't overspun, I could finally get into a rhythm and I saw the beauty of the Woolee Winder--once I got into that rhythm, I could just keep going. I didn't have to worry about stopping to move the yarn to another hook and then try to find the rhythm again. I think that if my single had been prepared better, I would have had a lovely time spinning.
But I did get through the single and got yarn:
Overspun in places and definitely not completely balanced, but that was an issue with my original spinning, not the Woolee Winder. I know that I made the right decision in getting it (and getting it for the Traveller as it is in plying that it will be most handy for me), so I'm looking forward to my future plying experiences.
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