Fiber Dreams

After that delightful note I got from the swift company late yesterday afternoon, I wrote back, “Fine. Send it back. We’ll fix it here. Thank you for your time.” A couple hours later, this came in:

There is another factor that may be involved. You have a large swift. It is usually purchased by weavers who make their own skeins on a niddy noddy which makes skeins more than 2 yards around. The medium swift holds skeins up to 2 yards. Yarn in skeins which originally came from Henry’s attic, are large skeins and some weavers purchase the large swift for those skeins. The medium size swift is sufficient for most skeins and actually is much better for unwinding small skeins. So, if you are unwinding small skeins on your large swift, it can be hard to tighten the swift enough to hold the skein, but not too tightly so that the swift will still spin freely.

Okay, so how does that explain why it used to work fine, but no longer does? Gads. This time my actual reply was quite a bit longer. I addressed all her points. Or tried to. I even included pictures. I told her that I don’t spin, and I’ve never purchased yarn from Henry’s Attic, told her that I mostly use it to wind commercially available sock yarn, lace weight yarn, yarns from Rowan, etc. Then reminded her that the swift worked just fine until early this year, that I only tighten it as far as I need to to keep the yarn from falling off, that the picture I mailed in wasn’t the position I use for winding, but was as a demonstration of the only thing I could take a picture of. I find it rather difficult to take a picture of something not spinning correctly.

Then I inserted this picture of the yarn all over the floor into the email message, demonstrating what I’ve been reduced to. Then this picture of that very same yarn on the swift. See how low the bars/rods are? Not stretched up to the top of the swift. Then I said this:

     Did you try a fine laceweight yarn on that thing? The whole skein? How dense was the resulting ball. Could you get it off of the ball winder? It used to spin freely enough to make winding sock yarn and laceweight yarn a breeze, making a firm ball of yarn that easily came off of the winder. It was fun and easy–not a pain and a chore, and did not ruin fine yarns.

     I went to my local yarn store this summer when I had 1200 yards of laceweight wool to wind. They let me use their swift. It’s the same size as mine, and a lot older. They got it out from behind the counter, but I set it up, I put the yarn on it, I placed the winder, all like I do at home. It worked fine.

Then I told her that unless she’s actually going to fix it, I just want her to send it back, reiterating that my husband will give it a go. And I closed with this:

We both thought it would be better to have a professional fix it, someone who actually understands how they’re put together, how they work. But that no longer seems to be an option. Thank you anyway.

I know that I could have been nicer throughout this. But for pete’s sake. I have a low frustration threshold when dealing with idiots and obstruction­ists. Especially when I’ve had a sinus headache all day, like I did yesterday. Especially when people say they’re going to fix something, then turn around and tell me it’s not broken, when the evidence is staring them in the face. Arg. They should just be happy that I wasn’t as catty as I really felt like being.

I’ll try to have something more positive for you later today. We’ll see how it goes. I might make you wait until tomorrow. I’m still a little miffed about the swift. I did make progress on my stole, though I think the row count is going to be off. I may have to rip out most of what I knit last night. Good news here is that I actually put in a lifeline, so it won’t be that big of a deal.

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