Good things take time…

As a former linguist, I have a special attraction to proverbs, coolocations and phrases in a language. In German we also say “Gut’ Ding will Weile haben”, which translates just about into ‘good things take time’ as I wrote at the top.

Four months. That is how long I have waited for this.

I own two spinning wheels, both from the New Zealand based wheel manufacturer Ashford. The traveling wheel, Joy 2, even is a souvenir from New Zealand which I brought back with me when I visited there the last time. It is practical for going out of the house when meeting friends for a spinning session, because it can be carried easily in a bag and folds up nicely. It has jumbo bobbins and is a one-drive. But my favorite is the Elisabeth 2, with a large wheel, and it just has a much nicer feel to it when sitting down to spin for a while.

A couple of weeks before Christmas, just when I had started spinning my advent calendar with spinning fibre, 

I had an idea how to increase the bobbin volume of my Elisabeth 2 wheel. Without having to change the flyer, that is, because I don't want it to have a jumbo flyer. The original bobbins for Elisabeth 2 are smaller and take about 100 g of spun fiber. I took a sample bobbin to a local carpenter and asked him whether it would be possible to make one that holds a larger amount of yarn, but still fits into the spindle, which the jumbo bobbins don’t.

He liked the idea, helped me with calculation and measurement, but he had to pass the order on to a colleague whom he works with on a regular basis for turned-wood items.

First, it took several weeks to get a price estimate. I had wanted to order 6 bobbins, to be prepared for everything. Not that I am planning on ever spinning a 6-ply yarn, but if you have two different 3-ply-projects going on… it is very similar to fabrics. You might need just the other one…

But when we received the price some time in late January it turned out that the price for six would not go down compared to the price for only a single one, so we agreed to order only a sample bobbin to begin with and figure out whether it will work.

It arrived today, and tonight we are meeting with our craft group, so I will get to try it out. Of course, it will be a while before I have a full bobbing to figure out whether the intention behind it all, namely that the enlarged sides will make it possible to wind more yarn safely, nor do I have a plying project waiting for me right now…

And I can’t take that wheel onto vacation with me. (I am going to Fuerteventury on Saturday.) But perhaps I will be able to tell pretty quickly. The carpenter hasn’t charged me yet, because he says we need to find out first whether ‘it works’. Which I thought was very kind of him, but certainly I don’t want to let him wait as long as I (or better: the two of us together) had to wait to begin with. But there is another saying in German: "Was lange währt, wird endlich gut." That which takes long to develop will turn out well in the end.