Spinning Wheel!!

It came yesterday and the oil and niddy noddy I got in today! My brand new spinning wheel is an Ashford Traveller, with natural finish, double treadle, and double drive (which has an option to do scotch tension). It is pretty light now but I have wax coming in as well! As you can see in the pictures I have a radiator in the most awkward place in my room but my wheel is as far away from that as possible.

My oil, niddy noddy sampler, and the hand-spun skein
from a previous post!

So I put this thing together with a screw driver, allen wrench, measure tape, and a bit of improvisation on "candle wax." Some who have put their ashfords together will recall a small step where you hammer a metal rod into the slit on the wheel. I did not have a hammer and you don't want to know what my £10 screwdriver's shaft looks like now. But I got it in! When I had just finished tying the drive band on, our fire alarm went off in my building, for real. No fire just an idiot opening a door instead of a window in a place with all doors as fire doors (which contained the smoke in the hallway) and one of our clean staff pressed the black button. Sigh. It would have been just my luck! But it is safe as you can see and so am I at this moment. I have been spinning for the last two days, getting used to things and I just love it, soo much faster with plying and spinning in general! This would have helped when I spun alpaca the other day!

Ok now onto the spinning wheel!

That honey color on the center of the wheel is what its going to look like with wax, thats a bit of oil that spilt.