I LOVED the suggestion of winding warp yarn onto 4" spools for ease of measuring warp with multiple threads so I gave it a try. I wound my warp yarn onto some 4" wooden spinning wheel spools. I have a lazy Kate, and a winding station with horizontal bars for holding spools so I thought ,"great, easy peasy, I'm all set." Alas, that is not how it turned out.

I tried putting the spools on the lazy Kate with and without tension and then tried putting the spools on the winding station bars. Using a warping board I found that the spools spin so fast that as I change direction, the spools over-spin, stop, unwind, stop, start spinning, stop, etc as I go back and forth. I thought the Lazy Kate with tension might solve the problem but found it either did nothing or stopped the spools from spinning all together.

The end result is that I couldn't keep a smooth rhythm going or consistent tension because I was constantly fighting the yarn tugging at every direction change. In the lessons it looks like the yarn is flowing very smoothly off the 4" spools. Is there a trick to it? Might wooden spools spin too easily? Any suggestions? It seems that I have appropriate equipment but, boy, what a challenge that was. I'd love to use spools to allow for faster warp measuring but fighting the tugging made me move slower than doing 1 yarn at a time.