First of all, I wanna show you how the ‘happy accident’ is spinning up.

I’m really happy with it. I LOVE rambouillet. It is SOOO soft and spins similarly to merino, which I also love.

Also, I thought you might like to see this:

No! It is NOT mine! It is on loan. It is a Majacraft Rose, the wheel I’ve been ogling for several months.

I tried several wheels. I tried the Susie, but didn’t like it as much. The Majacraft Pioneer spins very smoothly, but didn’t have the ‘heft’ that I felt with the rose. I also tried the Schacht Ladybug and that one spins very nicely as well – it felt very comparable to the Majacraft Pioneer.

When I got her home (yes, even though the wheel is not mine, it still feels like a ‘she’), I had to get used to the idea that I actually had a wheel in my home. I’d walk by it an look at it, just a wee bit intimidated.

Finally, I stopped and examined her closer… and the big question became … how do I get the bobbin off?

So I did something I do well – Research! I got the manual off of the Majacraft website and printed off some pages and finally found the information I was looking for.

The first thing I spun was some light brown Romney that I had dyed. It was the same fiber that I used in my spinning wheel lesson.

Not. fun. The colors were nice, but the actual spinning this fiber made spinning not fun. When I finally realized the fiber was the issue, I moved over to some blue merino top that I bought over a year ago from Strings & Yarn in the ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ colorway.

BOY! What a difference! Soft and pretty fiber sliding through my fingers make for quite an enjoyable spinning experience.

One of issues I have is getting the wheel started in the correct direction. I had a lot of curly-cues on my first bobbin. Not so many on the 2nd. (I’m planning on spinning up a 3-ply – which will be my first three ply EVER!)

My other issue is that I treadle like a maniac. I can’t seem to slow my feet down. I can make a conscious effort to do so, but as soon as my mind wanders, my feet pick up speed. I moved to the lowest ratio on the whorl, and that helps, but my feet still move too fast. Hopefully in time, I will calm down in that regard. After I finish this three-ply, I’ll take some time to focus just on treadling to try and get more control over it.

Here is the first bobbin:

All I can now say is that the more I spin on her the more I love her.

Layaway is a good thing.