Yes thats right, its on its way! And a while back, I wrote an article on how you, my spinner friends, can survive it, and bring your loved ones to safety, using your often scorned and abundant collection of spin related items. Here it is! (Originally published in  ‘Entangled’...

If you caught our Fiberygoodness live broadcast last night you will have seen this already, the Overdrive, the bigass bobbin and spinning head that is now (probably permanently) afixed to my One Wheel, (my Aura). This is my baby come home! Over the last year of being let into sharing this process with Majacraft, I can tell you, it was like christmas at my house when this finally arrived. It took almost exactly a year from ‘first contact’, and discussing what features and systems a giant Majacraft bobbin would need, to make it something super special.It needed to work well as a ‘production’ wheel as well as keep the Aura characteristics that make it ideal for constructing the architectural yarns I am currently working on and the art yarns that I know many people enjoy spinning. Good things take time, no, I mean.. amazing things! It was so worth the wait. This has the features I already loved about my Aura, large scale. Bypassable orifice and guides, amazing tensioning system, easy treadling, and great visual presence too. And it spins so well, there is almost no transition to make between spinning on the Aura and spinning on the Overdrive, the same tension, the same fine responsiveness, no big difference in weight as the bobbin fills, it treadles the same way throughout. Having spun on ‘other’ large capacity wheels I can say for certain that the difference is the same as if you were to compare say, driving a tractor and then hopping in a Rolls Royce and taking it for a spin, it almost drives itself. But unlike the Rolls, this is no elitist item, if you are used to the Aura you will find this works exactly the same way, but  this is not exclusive to the Aura, for Rose and Suzie owners, Andy has designed it so it will fit these wheels too, effectively turning them into Aura style production spinners with a simple (2 minutes max) head exchange.   You can find more details about the Overdrive on the Majacraft blog and the Product page on their website. Another super fun part was planning the whole release-launch of this product, and again, I was grateful to be included in that, we found some cool stuff! Like the Bachman Turner OVERDRIVE track Andy posted with the teaser! I wonder how many people see the connection there now? It was a bit obscure.. and you were lucky you didnt get the 70’s video version with the big moustaches and skin tight silk jeans.. OMG! Well lucky THEN, because I am sharing it with you now! I had suggested to Andy that he should sport one of those ‘special’ moustaches for the...

Backstory: Remember a few months ago I was in New Zealand? And I was visiting at Majacraft? Glynis made mention in their newsletter that we had spent some time in the design room while I was there. One of the outcomes of that was the creation of the circular looms that Arlene (SpinArtiste) and I had been discussing with them for a while, in conjunction with our Golden Fleece course. The OTHER thing that we were doing at that time was also seriously cool, I haven’t been able to tell anyone about it yet, but it was a continuation of an on-going development that we had started way back at the beginning of  2013, something a bit more complex than the circular loom, a bit bigger, and a lot more technical. It was something that went through the drawing stage, involved various ideas sent back and forth that were used, or dumped, or  modified, adapted, and tweaked. Then it went to the prototype stage, as Andy created the design that so far looked great on paper. It looked great in reality too, only… it didn’t work in quite the way it should have. At this point it was put aside for a short while.. thinking time. We continued to discuss it (yes ok I continued to nag about it) and the plan was that when I was there, we would take another look at it together in the workshop and see what could be done. There were a couple of key features that I was determined it should keep. And guess what, during the testing of the first prototype, we came up with the perfect solution! And it was, of course, the simplest one. It did mean scrapping some of the first cool ideas, but Andy is the Design King, and the final solution he has now created is no compromise, it’s a very elegant product and I am sure when you see it you will agree! The Live Event! Now ‘it’ works perfectly, better than perfectly. It is awesome. I don’t think I am saying this just because it is a bit ‘my baby’, I really think its going to blow many socks off 🙂 And it will be revealed in just over a weeks time! We will be running our very first FiberyGoodness live broadcast, it will be the first of many, and the plan is to interview  one of our Fiberygoodness affiliates, one of our sponsors, or a course participant, in each broadcast. For our very first broadcast what could be more perfect then, than an interview with Andy of Majacraft, this company’s backing has been a fantastic boost to our Journey to the Golden Fleece...