Move Along, Move Along

Something absolutely wonderful arrived for me in the mail on Wednesday. I got a text message from Elanor around 1:30 saying, "Your wheel's here."
Patrick and I left promptly to go see it.
The box is enormous and flat and had to go through JFK Airport to get here from The Netherlands. It's an Ariadne, single-treadle, single-drive upright. His name is Eddie.

Patrick stole my DSi and took a few pictures of me assembling the base (using my wonderful Swiss Army Knife, a real one, my most useful Christmas present ever).

Eddie is a lovely, simply designed wheel that needs a lot of cleaning. He's unfinished. I am totally thinking paint, though. Give him a little spice. Patrick says I can probably bring him with me when we go on vacation in a couple of weeks. I'm so excited. Eddie runs smoothly without much noise at all (the only part that kind of squeaks is the treadle, but there's not much I can do about that, it's just a light metal-against-wood squeak that doesn't mean anything bad.

Eddie's flyer is the approximate size of a small, hand-held trident, and if I sharpened the tip a little I could very likely use it like one. And all you spinners out there know what a big flyer means....



Big bobbins. My mom has bobbin envy, hers are so tiny. Here are two of them, sized against my US size 8 1/2 sneaker for comparison. They're like lightweight dumbells.

Unfortunately, by the time I'd assembled Eddie, I had to run off to work (I was very nearly late). We've been incredibly busy lately, and by the time I had gotten off of work Thursday, not only was it late but I was exhausted and definitely not up to playing with him. Yesterday, since I opened and got out around 5, I sat around the living room chatting with my parents for a while to relax and then brought a chair over and Eddie and I learned a bit about each other.

I don't have a picture of it, but the tensioning system on Eddie is a little odd. He has a metal crook that goes over the orifice end of the flyer, and you can adjust the tension on the flyer by tightening or loosening the hook. And it took me a while to learn to tug a little when I'm drafting, otherwise the flyer doesn't spin enough and there goes your yarn. (I don't have an orifice hook yet, so I'm kind of fishing around with a bent-out-of-shape hanger.) Though maybe that isn't odd, and I'm just learning how to spin on a single-drive.

Saraspunda is very different, but even though I learned on her I never got too far into knowledge, so I'm just fresh enough to know the basics of how Eddie works while still needing to fine-tune the specifics. It's fun.


I managed to produce a good quantity of romney yarn barf last night in various shades of pink, purple, and blue.

We've been ridiculously busy at work lately, and I know it's because we're right next to the movie theatre and good movies have come out this week (GO SEE TRANSFORMERS 2. NOW. I COMMAND IT.) But it's also because school is out and the kids are about now. That is not always a good thing. I've been making good money working my ass off going crazy every night, but the money is the only benefit. I stay late, I work myself stupid, go home, sleep for a few hours, and then get up the next morning and do it again. There is no fun in that. Not that I really expect there to be any fun, but now Pizza Hut has consumed even more of my life. It's not a fun feeling, realizing that 85% of your time is spent waiting on other people for very meagre tips. We now have only four dedicated servers, two of which (myself being one of them) have no real restrictions on what hours we can work. Kevin lives a few towns away and has troubles coming down sometimes, but not often. Amber is still a minor and can't work long hours, or late. Kristen and I are the pizza hut hour whores. It's not pleasant by any definition.

All-in-all, there are ten people total working at that store. It's not enough. Not unless Matt wants us to drop dead from exhaustion in a week. I hope he hires someone who's willing to work, and isn't just a pretyt face. (He's a big time lecher.)

Enjoy your weekend, everyone. I'll be back tomorrow with Sunday Morning Fiber Photos.

When all you have to keep is strong,
Move along, move along, like I know you do.
And even when your hope is gone,
Move along, move along just to make it through.
~ The All-American Rejects "Move Along"