Happy Birthday to Me!

Thank you all for the compliments about my new hair! I am really enjoying it, although the first night, I washed my hair and went to bed with it wet (as I've always done), and woke up with a head full of Shirley Temple ringlets. Turns out I have curly hair. Who knew? I haven't quite figured out the blow-drying thing, so I have yet to get it looking much like the stylist did, but it still looks pretty good, as long as I manage to straighten out some of the curl.

There seems to be a rash of birthdays around blogland lately, at least among the blogs I read. Today is mine. Last night, the darling husband had a dinner at our house for me. (The dear man worked his handsome butt off, too. I think he spent the entire day in the kitchen--after coaching Pee Wee football at 8:00 am.) My parents came, and our oldest and his girlfriend drove down from college, and some friends also joined us. The meal was lovely and the company was fabulous--and my sofas arrived before the guests! They turned out exactly as I had pictured and I'm very happy with them. (Of course I didn't let anyone sit on them, so we don't know whether they're still as comfortable as they used to be.) But the real news is my husband's gift to me. The spinning wheel that I bought last month was supposed to be my birthday present, so I wasn't expecting anything; the wheel was a great gift. But hubby (who's really racking up those bonus points lately), surprised me with these:

For you non-spinners, these are really, really cool. That odd looking thing with the arms is called a Woolee Winder. The other things are bobbins for the Woolee Winder. The WW, as I'm going to call it, replaces the flyer on a spinning wheel. Why? Well, look at the flyer.

See those little hooks? Those little hooks guide the yarn onto the bobbin. You start by looping the yarn onto the first hook. Then, as each section of the bobbin fills with yarn, you have to stop and move the yarn to the next hook, then resume spinning. This may not seem like a big deal, but as you get faster at spinning, and especially when you're plying (which goes much faster and takes up more space per yard on the bobbin), it starts to get pretty annoying to keep stopping to move the yarn. Each time you stop, you have to let go of the fiber, which untwists a little and changes your tension and thickness and generally makes it harder to get a nice, smooth, even yarn.

Enter the WW. See how there's only one hook and some gears? Those gears cause the hook to move from side to side along the bobbin, all by itself. This means the yarn winds onto the bobbin back and forth, without the spinner ever having to stop and move the yarn from one hook to another. I've been coveting one of these for a while--actually, since I got the wheel and figured out how it worked (and that the hook thing was kind of a pain). But they're not really necessary, and they're expensive. In fact, I think the WW and the bobbins--the WW requires its own, special bobbins, because they have to have gears on the ends to work--cost about as much as the wheel. So this was a little luxury that I was never expecting to own.

But what makes it not merely a great gift but a truly spectacular one is the fact that my husband, who is iffy on the whole subject of my little fiber obsession, actually knew what a Woolee Winder was, and that I wanted one! I did not ask for this item. I think I mentioned that such a thing exists, but I certainly didn't point him in the right direction. And folks--he got the right model for my wheel, which means he also knows what type of wheel I have! This is way above and beyond the call of husbandly duty, even for my husband, who raises the whole husband thing to something of an art form. It even beats the ball winder and swift he got me for Christmas last year.

The Icarus Countdown: 1 school meeting+1 music lesson+1 football game+ 1 karate class=7 rows. 29 days and 24 rows left to go!