Yesterday afternoon, I came downstairs after my shower and saw a yellow and brown piece of paper taped to the front door. I nearly had a heart attack when I realized it was the "Sorry we missed you" note from UPS telling me they had tried to deliver my wheel but needed a signature. (Did I mention we recently discovered that the doorbell can't be heard upstairs? What kind of ghetto doorbell only rings in half the house?) I flung the door open and, THANK GOD, I saw the UPS truck still parked outside, so I ran out and found the driver in the back of the truck rearranging boxes. I must have looked like a crazy woman, sprinting out with my hair still dripping wet, frantically waving my door note in his face. After I babbled on and on about how glad I was that I caught him and how impatiently I had been waiting for this since before the hurricane, he chuckled at me and said, "I'm glad I picked this street to stop and organize my truck."
So far I am very pleased with my results. The learning curve with this wheel was fairly small, and after only one minor screw up (I forgot to attach the tension knob and couldn't figure out why it wouldn't suck the yarn in) I was trucking along. The foot pedal placement is nice, and the concept of having brakes is neat although I doubt I'll use them. It weighs one meellion pounds, so I have to stop what I'm doing to move it around rather than scooching it to the perfect location with my toes.
I'm up to 4 yarns so far and they all turned out almost exactly like I had in mind. My favorite is the uncarded alpaca (the greenish one in the bottom picture). It turned out very similar to a skein of Ozark Handspun, but much softer and fluffier. (Surely it will shed like crazy, but there's no use fighting it. That's what alpaca does.)
There's a botleneck of twist-setting because I've only got one yarn-tensioning-device. This leads me to believe I've got to come up with some sort of system for mass skein drying. It's no use hanging them all with weights in the bathroom because our shower curtain rod topples to the ground every time you put too much weight on it. Maybe I'll get one of those metal laundry racks or outdoor clothes lines. Anyway, here are pictures of my adventures so far:
