12.06.06

Wheel Wednesday/Woolarina Wednesday

Posted in Victoria, Wheel Wednesday, spinning at 12:51 am by wendy

So I thought, to help me keep motivated to post a little more, and with a bit more substance (to better reflect my life, o’ course) I thought I’d try the whole day-theme thing. Like Marketing Monday ( a shameless shop update feature day) or Technique/Tutorial Tuesday (some technique I’ve done/learned in the week), Wheel Wednesday (either what’s on the wheel, or a review of a wheel), Fiber Friday (a fiber I’ve been spinning, breed stuff if I can dig it up), whatever although this might merge into a Spinning Saturday, or Spinning Sunday, although I was kind of thinking of a Doggy Domingo day. Y’know. We’ll see if I can sustain any kind of blogging pace at all.

Those astute Sesame Street kids out there will immediately gasp, “But there’s no day that begins with the N sound! Is this the end of knitblogging?” (I’m not sure how much a difference that would make to my content really, sometimes it seems I haven’t knit in days.) No, but I’m hoping this will help me focus a little more.

Woolarina Wednesday is just to say, hie thee on over to the shop and get some pretty yarns and benefit a good cause. Go to Paula’s blog and scroll down to the December 2nd entry for more details about what’s going on and the charity to benefit: So Others Might Eat.
“Wheel Wednesday” isn’t always going to be about a particular wheel, I think usually it’ll just be about what’s on the wheel, what spinning project is going on and how it’s going, but this week, because I’m still freakin’ excited about the new toy, it’s about the Victoria.

I scanned the instructions for the Victoria/s95/s96 in and converted them to pdf. They are available here. I did do a little video on youtube of setting it up, but the sound is all out of sync and it’s a bit weird.

I think I’m going to start trying out jumpcut.com instead, since they have editing ability, and if there’s one thing I need, it’s editing. I also did a vid of putting it away, but in talking about the bag I went over the 100mb limit (that both youtube and jumpcut have) and the camera needs its batteries recharged before I can reshoot that, and I’ll update this with a video of spinning on it, and all its little pieces.

I was a bit annoyed when I first opened it up and saw the bobbin. That bobbin is not the “standard Louet” bobbin we were told (and I told people who asked) it would have.

The s17’s bobbin is on the left, the Victoria’s bobbin on the right.It is a nice bobbin, and larger than the Lendrum’s, but given how expensive Louet bobbins are, I think that was a bit of a bummer. BTW, on a local note, I’m going to get the contact info from Margaret Tyler, the local spinning guru, of a local woodworker who has expressed interest in making bobbins and see if he can produce them/replacements for a better price. I’ll update this when I know what’s up.
I admit, I was wondering how they were going to work out the scotch tension setup with the standard bobbin, but I figured that they were going to have the scotch tension run over the largest groove and the poly band over one of the others, which isn’t really scotch tension. But I thought, huh, maybe that’s why there are only two ratios listed in the info, which seemed kind of lame. So, I was still excited, but had some reservations.But it showed up with real honest to goodness scotch tension, very light and small and spinning great, so I’m happy. The ratios are 1:6, 1:9, and 1:13, which are in the range of most spinning wheel’s ratios for their “regular” whorls. (Lendrum is 6, 8, 10 to 1) And while I’ve read on the Spin-List that someone has already spun thread thin on it, I am looking forward to trying the high speed whorl (although I’m wondering how they’ll do that, as the whorl seems pretty well fixed on the Victoria, you can unscrew it through the back, but that doesn’t strike me as terribly convenient for interchanging speeds). And I heard a jumbo flyer is coming out soon. The bobbins will be available in January from Louet.Anyway, I’m going to do a comparison video set, to compare the ease of set up, spinning, bobbin changing, between the Louet Victoria and the Lendrum folding wheel, because I think seeing it in action is better than all the typing I can do. I do think it treadles more easily than the Lendrum, requiring very little pressure, and the wheel stops when you stop moving your feet and doesn’t roll back. It’s easy to start in the right direction without using your hand, and the draw in is smooth. I think it will replace my Lendrum.
I’ve spun up a full bobbin of the dyed 80s merino and have decided to keep going with the singles spinning for a 3 ply. It’s spongeygoodness.Random: I went to my first tea party on Sunday and thanks go out to Nancy for putting on such a big yummy spread (heehee). Hilari brought some amazing poppy seed lemon rosettes. I brought a cake from the same people who made our wedding cake, but we were too full to eat it, so it was just divvied up and brought back home. I really prefer buttercream frosting to whipped cream frosting, I could have sworn the counter girl said the cake had buttercream. Oh well. Live, learn, still eat cake and get porky.

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