Practice Makes ...

Well, not perfect, certainly. But better: Behold my second attempt at spindle spinning, done over the course of a couple of hours last night:

You can see it all got a little wonky toward the end there with some underspun portions, but trust me when I tell you that it was much more even at the beginning. I was certainly able to handle the spindle much better and no longer needed to "park and draft" to spin. I'm still struggling with adding more fiber, though some of my joins were better than others.

I was excited to pick up the spindle again after Jen let me try out her beautiful wheel over the weekend (we were talking fiber while the boys were playing video games). I felt a little bad about ruining her bobbin of very nice looking singles with my slubby mess, but she assured me she didn't mind. I will say that her wheel is quite beautiful and she was extremely nice to let me test drive it!

I'm still not sure if there's a wheel purchase in my immediate future. I'm going to wait until after my spinning class at the festival, once I've got the mechanics down a little better. I'm pretty sure that if I do buy one, it will be a single treadle. I just don't think I'm coordinated enough to manage two treadles in addition to what I have to do with my hands.

Lest you think I've spent all my time playing with roving, I present you with evidence that I have still been knitting:

The beginning of BSJ #2, which as you can see is being worked in the same striping pattern as the first one. I worked on this on Saturday afternoon while finally watching La Vie en Rose (I had to do something I could do mostly without looking; my French is not good enough to go without subtitles).

Oh, and I finished my first Jitterbug Monkey.

Mmmm, so nice and squishy and soft!