Patience

Depending on how closely you were paying attention to my last post, you may have picked up on the fact that I made an additional purchase last week as a result of my SSK trip. That's right: I bought another wheel. I fell in love with the Schacht Flatiron after trying it in the Tasting Room, and Amy and Scooter Pie of the Ross Farm had one available. So on Thursday evening, I drove out to meet them and pick up the wheel.

I had planned to spend some time putting it together and giving it a test drive this weekend, but unfortunately there was a slight snag in that plan. When I opened up the box on Friday evening to pull all the parts out, I discovered that about half of them were missing. I had all the main pieces for the wheel, but no bobbins and no screws or connectors. Amy thinks that there was a snafu in the Schacht spinning department, but she has a call into the company and expects that they'll send me the missing parts.

So there was no spinning on the new wheel, and I'll have to wait a bit before I can put it together, but when that does happen, I have a great selection of fiber from the farm to play with:

This is all wool from Amy and Scooter Pie's sheep, I think about 2 oz. each of each type. In the back are Leicester Longwool and Tunis; in the front are Jacob and Romney. I've only spun two of the four breeds before, so these samples should be a lot of fun.

In the meantime, I haven't been twiddling my thumbs. I've got two other wheels and lots of fiber still to spin, specifically the Charollais from Southern Cross Fibre. I finished up the second bobbin on Friday night.

I got a brief start on the third bobbin before going to bed on Friday and have worked on it the past two days. I'd say I'm probably halfway done with it, and to be honest, I'm kind of kicking myself for not working on this fiber more during the Tour de Fleece, because it's spinning up quickly enough that I probably could have finished at least one skein.

I am getting better at my long draw, and it's certainly a much faster way to go through fiber than my typical short forward draw. I anticipate that this third bobbin will be done and plying will happen this week!