Thursday, January 22, 2009

Round and round

My spinning hit a snag earlier this week when one of my bobbins - one that was full of newly spun singles - fell apart. Both end discs came off (I want to call them whorls but they are not the whorl, so...discs it is) and I'm just sitting there with a wooden tube wrapped in wool that could leap off the edge at any moment. I'm a little miffed - this is not supposed to happen. I guess it's possible maybe I overfilled the bobbin? I googled to see if it was a common problem but I didn't see anybody else having problems, so I think it was just an isolated issue with my bobbins, which really weren't in great shape coming out of the box. Two out of the three were dented, though not badly enough to really affect the function, and one of them had one disc fall off before I even put any yarn on it. The SO is calling the place he bought the wheel to fuss a bit, but last night I bought some superglue and fixed them. One of the bobbins still has a problem, because the disc on the end is dented, which has splintered the wood a little bit, and splintered wood is not good for yarn. So I'm hoping he can get them to replace that one at least.

I tried gluing the discs back on the bobbin without taking the yarn off, but that didn't go well since the yarn kind of wanted to expand so it was pushing outward on the discs, and I didn't want it to get in the glue, so I had to wind the yarn off on my niddy noddy and then glue the bobbin back together.

I did order more bobbins and a tensioned lazy kate after all this insanity. When I took the merino off the bobbin to free it up to spin the Corriedale, I wound it off on my niddy noddy, aand I'm hoping that putting it on my swift like a normal skein would give me more tension than the kate, and make a nicer, less kinky and tight ball.

So, I have both the merino and the corriedale to ply (is it asking for trouble to ply the merino? Also, am I supposed to capitalize sheep breeds or not?) and I will have to ply both from center-pull balls, since I am not winding the Corriedale back onto the bobbin, so - I guess this weekend I am learning to ply from a center-pull ball!

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