guess what was waiting for me when i got home from work last night?

that’s right! the awesome people who shipped my new spinning wheel out from just-across-the-state-line, wisconsin, shipped it ups ground, which took only one day to arrive, and … instead of having a little yellow UPS delivery attempt notice stuck on the front gate, apparently one of my neighbors was home to accept the delivery! it was not even standing outside on the front stoop, it was carried up to the second floor landing, just waiting to be carried one final flight of stairs. (near as i can figure, this was a two-neighbor effort: the first floor neighbor works from home, so he probably accepted the delivery, but he doesn’t have access to our stairwell, so the second-floor neighbor probably carried it inside.) and! and it gets better! the wheel “required assembly,” which i was a little bit nervous about (having never worked on a wheel before, beyond playing with one briefly at Kim’s a year or two ago, the prospect of assembling my own was daunting). but as it turns out, the wheel manufacturers are so clever as to do all the hard work for me so that all i have to do is put the base on the floor, insert the upright into the base and screw it in (one screw), then plonk the top part on top of the upright, and screw it in (one screw). it took me about ten minutes, and only that long because i put it together without screwing it in place and then couldn’t figure out why the drive band kept slipping off the bobbin (turns out that alignment matters). then i happily pulled up an episode of “Star Trek” which had magically appeared on the DVR — “I, Mudd,” and can i just take this opportunity to say once more how much i adore WWME? because i do! — and tried it out. i can happily say that any incompetence reflected in the yarn (and oh boy is there a lot of it) points a beacon of blame straight at me, not the wheel. the wheel is very smooth and quiet and it’s sort of entertaining to watch the air fanned by the wheel blade blow back the fur on my cat as he stares suspiciously at it. i kept breaking the yarn because i can’t quite seem to get the twist right — i’d alternate between too much twist and the yarn would wrap back on itself, versus not enough twist and the yarn would pull apart and i’d have to re-thread it and go again. but i did get probably, um, … a yard or two successfully spun, in between breakage-rethreading incidents, so i feel confident that with a little more effort, using the wheel will be as painless as using the drop spindle. (can i just say again how excited i am that i didn’t have to wait until this weekend to get my new wheel? OH EM GEE. excitementpalooza! man, am i just the world’s biggest nerd.)