Well, Ain't She A Purdy One!!

Won this off of Ebay last weekend and picked it up yesterday on the way to the airport to get a car full of Irish tourists (nothing beats a 2 hour car trip home full of "howerya"s, "jaysis!!" and "yer wan der on te plane"s). They've all gone to Salzburg today and Munich for the night so I've got lots of alone time with my new best friend er South German Spinning Wheel.
Turns out the guy who was selling this set had absolutely no idea what he had. A friend emailed him to ask if it was in working order and he said he didn't know (quick aside: I have a funny feeling he was trying to side-step a "no" answer because the wheel wasn't spinning freely when I picked it up - someone had stuck the wool-puller through the wool-pulling keyhole (very technical terms here) and it was twisted around the flyer, thus locking the wheel). He thought I bought the set for decoration - cause, you know, it is kind of just pretty to look at :) and Irishboy gets a stupid grin on his face and says "oh no, she spins" which has a double meaning in German and made me sound like a nutter.
But I had it working in seconds, just need to re-bind the pedal to the stick thingie that turns the wheel (insert official technical term here) and we'll be spinning up a storm. He said he was just glad that someone came to pick it up and mentioned that a wannabe bidder emailed him from the States and asked if he would post it over the ocean but he figured they must be a bit crazy because who would buy a spinning wheel and have it shipped over from Germany???

Doesn't sound too crazy when I consider some of the things I've had posted over from North America (like Keds, beef jerky, Gap jeans, many pounds of wool, beef jerky, bed sheets, ibuprofen, beef jerky and all manner of knitting paraphernalia - and some beef jerky).