The Taming of the Schacht

Even though I've spun successfully on a Lendrum for many years, the Schacht Matchless has always been my dream machine. It's the wheel I learned on, and I always knew that someday I'd own one. I haven't been spinning much these last few years, so I kept putting it off. If I'm not spinning on the old wheel, how can I justify a new one? Well, I finally realized that I wasn't spinning because I wanted to make laceweight yarns and the Lendrum, even with a new fast flyer, just wasn't doing the trick. After MDS&W this year, I decided that the time had come for a Schacht. I placed an order with Bountiful.

The wheel arrived a couple of weeks ago and I set it up in scotch tension with minimal fuss. Ah! I've finally reached spinning nirvana, I thought, as I sat down to spin. The treadling was smooth and even, the wheel turned effortlessly, the Danish oil finish smelled wonderful, and the danged flyer wouldn't draw or wind on from the left. I tried everything to encourage it including more oil, changing the brake spring, changing the brake band, even switching to double drive. Nothing worked. It refused to cooperate.

Laurie told me that she had had a similar problem with her Schacht, and she solved it by only using the hooks on the righthand side. No, no NO! I thought. For nearly $900, the darned thing should work. I wrote to Lois at Bountiful. She'd never heard of this problem and forwarded my message along to Schacht. They were stumped too. I was almost ready to send the wheel back to them in disgrace.

But I'm a scientist and a metalsmith, and I just couldn't give up without a fight. I analyzed the situation carefully and observed that everything worked perfectly until I tried to wind on, and then the yarn got stuck. On a particularly bad snag, I cut the yarn, took off the flyer, and dug out my jeweler's loupe. I was astonished to see the yarn caught in a burr of metal on the inside left edge of the orifice. All the inside edges, in fact, were rough and sharp. So I took the flyer to my studio, ground and polished the edges to a high shine (by the time I'd finished, the reflection was blinding), and reinstalled it. Voila! It drew and wound on perfectly; left and right and on all hooks. Problem solved. I'll also note that Lois at Bountiful and the folks from Schacht were great. I was very impressed by their collective level of responsiveness.

My spinning corner is set and ready to go. Now I just need to figure out which fleece to dig into first.

The Road to Alpacas

We took the Prius and headed west...to Berkshire County in western Massachusetts, that is. Not only did we get 49 mpg, we got yarn... and fleece... and had a great time in the process.

First stop: Web's in Northampton. Laurie had never experienced Web's famous warehouse, but she handled it like a pro. She emerged with only three cones and a ball of sock yarn. I exercised restraint (given my already monumental stash) and selected just a single bag of natural-colored closeout Jo Sharp DK for the dyepot. Well, that and some single balls of a few other colors. The cones of alpaca/silk laceweight in the front room, however, were another story. Yum. I also got a whorl and a copy of the most recent SpinOff. I have to make one of those sheep puppets!

The highlight of the trip was our visit to Red Barn Alpacas in Sandisfield, an hour or so west of Northhampton. Sonja and Jeff made us feel right at home, and Wotsie, my favorite little dark brown alpaca, marched right up to say hello. Maybe it's because we made the trip specifically to buy his fleece. I have his 2005 fleece as well, and will send one of them out to be processed with the black border leicester fleece I got at MDS&W. The other I'll spin solo.

Since I was in the groove, I also bought an amazing light brown cria fleece from Copper. It'll spin into fabulous lace on my new Schacht.

Everyone had a good day.