Monday, May 6, 2013

Read the instructions FIRST

So, I had a few good sales the first of this year and last month I decided I was going to get the Freedom Flyer for my Joy wheel.  It had been a toss-up over saving for a Country Spinner or just getting a new flyer set-up.  $600 vs $100.00 - you can guess which one.



Why get a new flyer setup - well, I'm spinning more chunky yarns (not art yarn yet) and as I love to add beads to the yarns, the beads would get caught on the hooks.  In fact I'm working on a hand dyed green Tussah silk and I wanted to add green, blue and purple glass beads (plyed with a pale green cotton / poly sewing thread).  With the Freedom Flyer there are no hooks. - So I order the flyer on a Wednesday and Friday it was in my hands!

I pull every thing out of the box - there's the flyer and the BIG bobbin and a small bag 'O parts.  Parts.  I grab the instruction sheets (there were 2) and starting reading the sheet about the parts bag.  It said I had to change the shaft that you screw the flyer / bobbin in to.  Drat!  I had hoped for a "plug and play".  So the instructions  talked about removing the "E" clips (beware - they fly) and taking the back off, then tapping out the old shaft, etc.  I'll do that later.

So later is 2 weeks later - I NEED to spin up the blue wool and ply the pearls into it for this weekend.  Try as I could, I was not able to remove the "E" clip.  Drat!  I'm going to have to take everything up to The Village Spinning and Weaving shop and hope they can change this out for me.  Then I decided to read the other sheet - the one on setting up the bobbin.  There was this little note that read something like - if your Joy was made after 2002, don't worry about changing out the parts.  Fix the brake band and go for it.  I didn't have to change anything <palm to forehead>.

Sometimes I swear I am such a guy.