Equipment Malfunction

"I've spun thousands of skeins of wool on that workhorse," is what Annie had told me when she lent me her spinning wheel. Despite the complete dismantling, refinishing, replacing visibly broken pieces and reassembling, the pitman crapped out just as I was starting to get my mojo working on the wheel.

You ask, "WTF is a pitman?"

It is the rod connecting the wheel (the big round piece) to the treadle (the thing you peddle) that is the driving piece of hardware. As the wheel goes around, the drive band attached is wound over the flyer pulley and the bobbin pulley...kind of like a serpentine belt on a diesel engine. The bobbin inserts into the flyer which spins around the bobbin as the fiber is drawn in through a metal tip with a T hole configuration that is inserted into a piece of leather attached to vertical piece of wood inserted in the top cross piece.

And the worst part---it's totally my fault.

When I refurbished the wheel I couldn't find a bolt with a smooth collar so I bought one with threads the whole way to the hex. Those grooves chewed right through the end of the pitman. A telephone call to the manufacturer who is still in business, a credit card number and a delivery from UPS a week later and I was back in action. 

However, during that lull a friend stopped by to drop off a spinning wheel that needed some TLC. "Fix it up and use it, would you," she said setting a very dusty Ashford Traditional spinning wheel in my living room. Unlike that damn diesel runabout I've been working my way through the electrical system in order to get it to run, the wheel's manufacturer had the schematic and operation manual freely down-loadable from the web site. 


An evening with an old t-shirt, a bottle of Murphy's Oil Soap and a few drops of 3-in-1 oil the old Ashford was back in business even with my poor spinning skills. Gradually with practice I'm getting the hang of it, but to get a better grip on my roving am considering taking a spinning class. 

In the mean time, I'm going to also start playing with felting. Tomorrow night at the Chambersburg Council for the Arts I'm taking a  Nuno Felted Scarf class and a Felted Hat class next month. 


This afternoon I have plans to shear a very dark wooled cull ewe with a long staple fleece (and a very bad attitude) for a felted rug prior to her ride on the Sausage Wagon. Actually, she'll be the Guest of Honor at one of Jose Andres' award-winning restaurants, Zaytinya, in Washington, D.C. so no humble sausage for her.  
Nothing goes to waste.