In Which the Pirate Upgrades the Sonata.

When I bought the Sonata, I decided that a Woolee Winder was too expensive, and invested instead in a bunch of bobbins. Later, I got the jumbo flyer and bobbins as well, and that (I told myself) was that. But then the Schacht-Reeves came with a WW, and I fell in love.

If you’re not familiar with spinning or Woolee Winders, here’s the deal: when you spin, the yarn you make winds onto a bobbin. Usually, you control where exactly on the bobbin the yarn goes by threading it around a hook, and when one portion of the bobbin starts to get full, you move the yarn to a new hook. Some flyers have sliding hooks, but you still have to manually move them. The Woolee Winder, on the other hand, has a gear-driven assembly that automatically moves up and down the bobbin as you spin, so you never have to stop and change/move hooks. You can fit more yarn on a bobbin when it’s winding on evenly, and not having to pause all the time is nice, too. Here are the two Sonata flyers for a comparison:

Yep, that happened! I saw that someone on Ravelry was selling a slightly used Woolee Winder, in the right colour, with six bobbins included, for the right price… and I jumped on the deal with a minimum of wembling over it.

Plying is going to be a lot less annoying now. (I know, some people like plying. I am not one of those people.) The Woolee Winder bobbins may not hold quite as much as the jumbo ones, but I think it’ll be worth it to have the faster speeds and more even winding-on.

The Woolee Winder bobbins are just about the same outside diameter as the regular Kromski bobbins, but the shaft is narrower and they’re about half an inch taller on the inside, so a lot more yarn fits onto them. Here’s a comparison picture with a Kromski jumbo bobbin on the left, the standard bobbin in the center, and the new Woolee Winder bobbin on the right. (Yes, sometimes I tape my leaders to the bobbins to keep them from sliding. Don’t judge me.)

Now I just have to finish last year’s Tour de Fleece project… I’ve made some progress since my last post, but not nearly enough!