Took the plung, drove myself nuts… Now what?
Ok, ive been reading many places and everyone who knew i had an asnford limited edition elizabeth still in its box has been saying oh its glorious, it will be everything you want.
So, i woke this morning, although a public holiday, day 1 of my days off work out of 10 and thought. Ok, i can do this.
Well, about two hours later, i needed to phone a friend. The split pin you put in to work with the tension knob wasnt right, the knob wouldnt turn and i was blowed if i could find my plyers to remove it
So, waiting for my ex husband to show to aid in its extraction, i continued the placing together, recognising that the mother of all is quite removable, i thought id do this step, so it was ready to fix on once the tension knob was sorted..
It was then to my horror i realised im a fecking moron.
Unlike the traditionals, this has a round mother of all, not flat, so clearly goes one way… Yeah the other bloody way. I had put both the legs, and ergo the treddle and wheel on… The wrong way round.
Now, the legs are held on with three screws that shouldnt be hard to fix… Got them off, tried to remove the wheel support uprights. Only held on with a bolt a piece.. Removed that… Did the wheel lift? Did it my arse..
So, now i had the stuck split pin which meant the tension knob wouldnt move, and then noticed a line that had escaped me about a metal thing going in a hole which also probably made the the thing work if the knob would turn, and still struggling and not getting that split pin out, and, now, not being able to get the wheel to lift off….
I was distinctly un calm by this point, my signed special wheel was not going to work if these things couldnt be fixed.
If you heard me swear at this point. Im sorry. I was not quiet or lady like it in any remote sense or looseness of the terms.
Thankfully ex hubby arrived. We spent an hour or so wiggling the uprights and pin until both finally came free and we could sort the thing out.
By about 2pm, the wheel was for the most part finished.
So, tied the double drive drive band on. Put the biggest whorl on, a bobbin, tied it as tight as we could, it flopped like a fish, many efforts to tighten it later, it was just about tight enough.. Just.
So, the wheel came with some fibre. Three colours, took the first out, on the big whorl, it wasnt exactly pulling the single on much, in fact, barely.. I felt a huge twang of disappointment. It seems so many rave about double drive, about how its best with fine spinning.. Yeah well this wasnt even working with normal slow spinning. Ok, lets try the smallest whorl… Nothing mentions the like 10 mins it takes to crank that tension knob to move the mother of all from one extreme to the other, nor does it say unless you have 1 atom thin fingers, the orifice hook will be in the way. Anyway, finally, start spinning, now the things actively pulling yarn off the bobbin and giving me it back.
I cant help but feel this is because the hooks on the flyer are on the left.. Its probably rot. But thats just how it felt.
Upset and highly frustrated, i went out for a few hours.
On my return i think screw it all, i will go single drive with scotch tension, thats never let me down. And other than its still hard to get enough tension in the drive band with the recommended knot, which i ditched and went for good old reif knot, finally, now we’re talking.
And as a challenge, i got the smallest whorl and tried to spin, my finest thread yet.
Or scale, thats a uk penny, which is marginally over 1cm in diameter.
Ok, so what in heck do you do with something that fine?
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