Spinning................

UGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!! PLEASE tell me that everyone's first spinning stuff looks THIS bad.........

This stuff is harder than it looks!! I was getting a little better at the end with the size of the thread.

I do actually finally have the treadling down - so YAY ME! It took a while before I wasn't shooting the damn thing across the room trying to treadle it. Treadling - check.

Then, on my second bobbin try, it took a while for me to figure out how to get the yarn to actually feed onto the bobbin (of course since I had f'd with all the settings) so my leader would go on but the bobbin would stop feeding once the roving got going which was causing it to WAY overspin. But I think I MAY have finally gotten that at least rudimentarily under control (ie - f with the settings some more).

So then I did a REALLY long leader, got my mojo up and joined some roving and it was going pretty good. The yarn was coming out nice and thin but I am still WAY, WAY overspinning it. I think my treadling is ok speed wise so I'm not sure what the deal is. Even if I am getting it to feed in ok it is still overspinning a lot. But I am getting more comfortable with the drafting motions.

I watched some videos and I was glad to see that you can actually hold the leader for a little bit. I was thinking that once the wheel got going you had to immediately have the yarn feeding in so I was trying to do too much at once and getting discombobulated. Once I realized it wasn't an EMERGENCY to get the roving on it went a little more smoothly.

So, practice, practice, practice. It is FUN though (when I am not cussing and throwing roving) and relaxing (again when I'm not cussing and throwing roving). I can easily see how you could sit and do it for a long time. I was wondering at first though because I was getting foot cramps and leg cramps and a back ache and having to THROW my body into the wheel to keep the wheel going.............glad to see that is actually just my over-reactive self and none of that is at all necessary.

I will be practicing more over the long holiday weekend and hopefully have better pictures of the next bobbin! We bought six pounds of roving to learn on...........boy am I glad we did!! I'm also really glad that we aren't practicing on our farm alpaca. I would feel terrible for wasting all of our very own alpaca roving!! So kudos to us for having that professionally done. It is in process so we should be going to get it SOON!!! I have a feeling I'm going to have plenty to do with 30# of alpaca hair all spun up............