Accidentally On Purpose

I accidentally bought a spinning wheel last week. I blame Jackie can't really blame anyone but myself.

Despite the fact that I am an indecently lucky lady with a beautiful Louet S60 spinning wheel that my lovely and generous stepmother Jackie gave me for Christmas...

Seen here being guarded by very grumpy cats who would prefer I pet them rather than spin.

My Louet is a wonderful wheel and I adore it. It's so sturdy and well made that I don't hesitate to put it in the car for a trip to a guild meeting or to spend the weekend with my fellow. It's also an fantastic workhorse. The bobbins are enormous - I've run out of the will to spin before filling one but I've been told a single bobbin will hold up to 250g (nearly 9 ounces!) depending on how you spin.. That's fantastic - I kept getting frustrated with Jackie's Ashford Traditional because the bobbins filled up so darn fast (they hold about 100g or 3-4 oz). Louis has an upright posture that's easy on my back and the broad single treadle allows me to easily work the wheel with either or both of my feet and my legs never get tired when I'm using it.

But it's an Irish Tension wheel - I can explain this in detail some other time but the long and short of it is that it's much better suited to doing thick yarns. This doesn't mean I can't spin fine, delicate threads on it - I absolutely can. It just takes more work than it did on the Ashford Traditional - a Scotch Tension wheel - that I originally learned on. So I've been playing around with the idea of acquiring an Ashford Traditional if I could find one that didn't cost too much.

Right about when I was considering a desperate 13 hour drive to pick up a wheel that the seller would absolutely not ship... Jackie asked me to pick up a wheel for her. If my life were a movie, this would have queued the ominous, dramatic music. Jackie's been looking for a wheel for a friend of hers and found a Kromski Prelude. I was already plotting against Jackie when she asked me to get it, I knew there was a possibility that I'd want to keep it after using it for a month and she said that'd be alright. I almost changed my mind when I picked it up because the seller had bought it as a toy and not loved it properly. It'd barely been spun on, dinged up quite a bit over a couple years, and hadn't been oiled since dinosaurs walked the earth (approximately).

Still I wanted to play with it! So I rolled my sleeves up, got out some oil, and got to work. I oiled everything that moved, reseated some connections, tightened some bolts... and after a couple hours she was spinning silky smooth.

And by golly is she ever a beauty.

The Prelude is an interesting piece. It has a smaller footprint than the Ashford Traditional and the orifice seems taller, which is easier on my back. It doesn't feel as stable as the Traditional and is more inclined to hyper dog-related upsets. But the bobbins are larger (I've heard claims of a 120g or 4.2 ounce capacity. I put 4 ounces on one bobbin last night without a lot of effort to pack it carefully and it's still got loads of room) and there are really solid ratios. One of the things I love is that, like the Louet wheels, the Kromski wheels all use the same bobbins... so if later I wanted to add another Kromski to my herd (*cough*pay the mortgage first*cough*), I know they'd be compatible.