Storage Bobbin Winding With Your Spinning Wheel

I still consider myself a fairly new spinner. I can speak the language (some of the time!), and I have a deep love of all things fiber that keeps me wanting to learn more and more. Last year, I participated in Tour de Fleece, challenging myself to spin for at least 20 minutes per day every day of the Tour de France, and I was completely taken aback with how much my spinning improved over just the few weeks of the Tour. So I didn't hesitate to commit to the Tour again this year. Several months ago, I contacted a very nice woman on Ravelry who was looking for spinners to spin up some of her Suri alpaca fleeces she was accumulating from her own animals, and I jumped at the opportunity. She asked if I had anything to combine with her silky, washed but unprocessed, fiber. I have a gorgeous first shearing Cormo fleece I brought home from Rhinebeck this year, so I set about combining some of it with her alpaca. I processed the alpaca fleece with hand cards, making a 75% alpaca/25% Cormo blend as I went. Whew - that is hard, but rewarding, work! I'd spun about a third of it all before the Tour, so I set a goal for myself to have the entire fleece spun, plied, washed, and mailed to the alpaca farmer by the end of the Tour de Fleece.

I have a Kromski Minstrel for which I purchased a Woolee Winder at Maryland Sheep & Wool in 2010. I've never purchased more than the single bobbin to go along with my Woolee Winder, so I've been hand winding my singles onto one of the three bobbins that came with my wheel. The first crisis arose when I realized I was going to need more than those three bobbins. A harried trip to a local craft store yielded Wilton's 7" Grecian cake pillars from the cake decorating aisle to step in as storage bobbins. Next I needed a faster, more efficient way to transfer my singles from my Woolee Winder bobbin to the cake pillars. There were lots of good suggestions in the "DIY Tools" Group on Ravelry, but I wasn't happy with the results of a few of the suggestions I tried. Another Raveler said she'd read in a back issue of Spin-Off magazine about how you can use your spinning wheel to wind singles onto storage bobbins without adding or subtracting too much twist. I had to try it. To my extraordinary joy, it worked! When I posted my celebration in the thread, another Kromski Minstrel owner asked me to post pictures of my set-up. I decided to go one better and write up a little tutorial!
I'm sure that this method might need slight tweaking to work with some wheels and may not work at all with others. I would love to hear from other spinners with different wheels about their results with this method.

Here we go!

First, let's talk tools. I used one of my cake pillars, a single US size 13 aluminum straight knitting needle, and some cotton crochet thread.

Before we start displacing and replacing parts, let's take a quick look at how my wheel is set up for spinning. Notice the difference between a regular flyer and my Woolee Winder flyer is the absence of hooks/presence of the rings through which the singles slide through and onto the bobbin.

Here's a photo of my Woolee Winder flyer removed from the wheel. Take notice of the orifice on the left and the pin that holds the flyer onto the wheel itself. These parts will be more important when we look at the next photo.

This is the mother-of-all, where the flyer actually sits on the wheel. The orifice rests in the U-shaped opening (on left, blurred in the photo), and the pin is inserted into the little hole you see on the right of the picture. These places on the wheel will be used to hold the knitting needle, on which the cake pillar will turn.

First slide the cake pillar onto the knitting needle. Then insert the pointed tip of the knitting needle into the little hole (where the pin of the flyer usually goes). The shaft of the knitting needle rests in the U-shaped opening toward you. Next you'll need to tie on a new drive band with a double loop of the crochet cotton. I'm sure you can use your existing drive band, but mine was too long and I really didn't want to shorten it just for the winding process. I found that one loop of crochet cotton wasn't substantial enough, but two loops worked very well.

Once the new drive band is around the wheel, place both loops of the wheel on the end of the cake pillar as pictured below. The thicker twine you see on the wheel is my original drive band; I've just put it aside for winding.


Here's a picture of my whole winding set-up. Notice my arched lazy kate on the ground to the left of my wheel.

Now to start winding! I found that I really needed to keep a hand on the knitting needle's end nearest me to keep it from jumping out of its spot. Also, I use my left hand to guide the single onto the cake pillar so it'll fill evenly. You'll have to adjust your tension throughout the process to keep the take up strong enough as the cake pillar fills. Sometimes I even had to slightly lift the end of the knitting needle nearest me out of the U-shaped resting place to keep the singles winding on at a decent pace. I treadle so that the wheel spins the same direction as I'd spun the singles, clockwise. Here's a photo of my hand placement as I'm treadling.

Once the Woolee Winder bobbin is empty, I'm ready to ply!

I really hope this tutorial is helpful to someone out there! If you have an questions or need clarification about any of the steps I took, please feel free to comment here or contact me on Ravelry. Happy spinning and good luck with your Tour de Fleece 2011 goals!