Sewing Emergency

I received a frantic phonecall yesterday at work. It was the middle of the day and highly unusual for her to call and not e-mail.
When I answered the phone, we barely had a the hellos out of the way before she conveyed her reason for calling.
"I have a sewing emergency."
Not going to lie, the first thought that came to my mind was, Why aren't you calling mom? but I was thrilled to be the top of the phone tree for sewing emergencies.
"Lay it on me," I said, "Did you blow up the machine? Is it smoking or on fire?"
I asked those questions first because if the answer was "yes" I knew the problem was beyond me.
She laid out the problem for me - short version is that the spool of thread she had been told to purchase was gargantuan and thus did not fit on her sewing machine spindle and she did not have an empty normal person spool to re-spool the giant on to - and the first thing I asked her was "Did you Google?"
I'll admit, I had only one solution for her: Re-spool the thread. We tried that (by we I mean she, but I offered an excellent level of moral support over the phone while googling to see what other people have done in this emergency.) I found a solution, a spindle adaptor. But upon further investigation this proved to be something you'd find if you were in the proximity of someone with plumbers butt...no good.
She told me that solution would have to be able to be fixed by one of three stores: Mac's Milk, A&P or the Library.
Easy.
Go to the library and find this book: Sewing 911.
Not a viable solution, apparently. Need something a little more immediate.
After a few false starts - and several INGENIOUS suggestions by moi, such as create a spindle out of papier mache - I could not find the solution she was looking for...aside from picking up one of these for future use:

This is what I came up with:
1. Hand wind the thread on to a bobbin, fit the bobbin on to your machine and use it for the main spool.
           This did not work because apparently, the bobbins she bought were spy-quality and self-destructing
2. Hand stitch the item you are preparing.
           This did not work because the amount of hand stitching would have caused carpal tunnel in anyone
3. Call Mum.
           This proved to be the most appropriate solution.

So tell me, what did you wind up doing? What would you do?

Elsie P

PS - I have it on good authority that the options Mum presented were similar to mine. WIN!!