Although I have owned this spinning wheel the longest, I have never used the Lendrum fast flyer. My Lendrum foldable DT is my oldest and dearest spinning wheel. DT stands for “double treadle,” and I loved the idea that it could be folded and stored when I was not using it. Well, almost 14 years later, it has only been folded once, when we moved from the Greater Montreal area back to our home province of Nova Scotia.
I bought my Lendrum sight-unseen only for the fact that it was Canadian-made and readily available. I purchased the plying head for my Lendrum as soon as I got the hang of spinning, but I’ve never bothered with any of the other attachments. I’ve never been a “thin” spinner, nor have I had any desire to be. I love funky chunky art yarns and big bulky squish.
But as my knitting advanced, I desired spinning thinner yarns. Coupled with Gord Lendrum’s announcement of retirement, it was time to purchase the fast flyer for my wheel before it was too late.
Installing the Lendrum Fast Flyer
The fast flyer is super easy to install, and luckily uses the same drive band and bobbins as the regular flyer (the plying head uses a different drive band and bobbins. The drive band can be a pain to swap out, so I leave it coiled up attached to the bottom of my wheel – you can see it in the photo above).
All you have to do is swap the regular flyer for the fast flyer and reattach the drive band.
I decided to document my first thoughts on using the fast flyer via video. Is it worth it? Is it easy to use?
You can watch my process spinning using the Lendrum fast flyer in the video below:
I decided to attempt a “sock” yarn. Sock yarns are usually fingering-weight, and I was not expecting to achieve a yarn that thin, not for my first time using the fast flyer and not for a handspun 3-ply, which I wanted for durability.
I decided to use superwash BFL once again for this project. Although superwash fibers aren’t my favorite, I’ve already dyed several braids of this fiber when I first got it in stock, so I want to use them up. Superwash is great for socks since it doesn’t felt, so if the socks accidentally get thrown in the wash, I don’t have to worry about felting or shrinkage.
I also want to get comfortable spinning superwash fibers because I know some people who can’t wear wool can successfully wear superwash.
Overall Thoughts of the Lendrum Fast Flyer
Bottom line, I really enjoyed using the fast flyer and am intrigued to keep using it. I only tried the largest whorl, so I think next time I’m going to go down to the smallest one and compare. It made achieving a thinner singles much easier – and faster! It certainly lives up to its name. I could get a steady and fast treadle on and was amazed at how quickly the bobbin was filling. The singles themselves quickly became consistently thinner, which I was thrilled about.
Compared to the regular flyer, when I would get treadling faster I would tend to lose control of the singles and it would break. Then I would have to stop, feed the singles through again and reattach the fiber. Before purchasing the Lendrum fast flyer I preferred spinning thinner gauges of singles on my e-spinner. Now that I’ve used the Lendrum fast flyer, it’s my preference for more consistent thin singles that work up quickly.
I also purchased the super fast flyer for my Lendrum spinning wheel, and I will document my thoughts on that once I feel like I’ve totally gotten the hang of this one.
I definitely feel that the Lendrum fast flyer was a good investment that will get lots of use with my Lendrum spinning wheel.
To read more spinning and dyeing content, check out the fiber arts/spinning/dyeing section of my blog. You can watch all my videos on my slowly growing YouTube channel.
