This is my new baby; it's a Louet hatbox wheel which I bought from someone on Ravelry. The transaction wasn't without incident as I live in Yorkshire and the seller lives in Swansea; getting the wheel from one to the other took a little longer than anticipated.
Originally I decided to ask the SUMA driver who does the South Wales run to collect it for me. I found out where seller lived (not far from one of the SUMA customers) and she agreed to drop the wheel to him if he rang to let her know when he'd be at the drop. Unfortunately this didn't work out as he didn't ring her!Grrrrrrr!
Still, she had a friend who was coming up to Sheffield the following week and he drove up to Elland where I work and dropped it off for me. Thank you very much to Mark, you're a sweetie Mark!I tried the wheel out when I got her home on Thursday and I spun this (Shetland?? BFL??) out of a grab bag I bought from World of Wool. I decided as the ratio on the wheel is quite low (she's a direct drive) 4:1 to spin it as low twist thin 'n thin singles. I'm pleased with the result as I didn't really know what I was doing but having subsequently looked at some instructions on t'internet I found that I was doing it right. Once I'd spun it I washed it in alternate baths of hot and cold water then hung it up with an empty shampoo bottle as a (very light) weight.
