Well, it is a beautiful day, so I took the wheel outside so I could take it's picture and show you how beautiful it is . The sales photo of this wheel does not do it justice. When I took the pieces out of the box, it took my breath away.

Here is a picture of the front of the wheel, where the extra whorl is stored. Look at the grain here. It is just gorgeous.

The most important question, though, is...How does it spin? The answer...like a dream. I have it set up as double tension, which has just been a breeze to use, and it spins up quite a bit faster than the borrowed wheel I was using. I finished this skein of 160 yards, 2 ply of the roving I got from the Hendersons last night. Plying was practically effortless on this wheel. The only thing that I have reservations about is that the lazy kate is not tensioned. Since all their other wheels come with a tensioned lazy kate, I am a bit dissapointed in this, but I am also trying to figure out how I could rig that up. There has to be some way to do that. That one negative is far outweighed by the postivies though.

I also figured out what my next knitting project is going to be. I got the Interweave Knits Winter 2004 edition today, and it has a pattern for a fair isle hat in it that I just love. There are lots of things in there that I love, but that is the one that I want to do first. I hope I can find some way to afford it after the big purchase of the wheel. It will probably be after we get our income tax back, but it is something I really look forward to. It looks like a blast to knit.