Patience, my dear

I once read a book starting with that sentence. While reading, I thought it must mean "being patient" but few words later it turned out that the heroine's name was Patience. Patience, along with Prudence, Harmony, Faith, April, May, June and Wednesday are not on my shortlist of names if I ever have a baby girl. Just sayin'.

What I really want to say is that one or other similar sentiment has been offered to me by Ted and Lorraine while learning to spin with the spindle. It might not be a big secret to some of you, but I am not a patient person when it comes to my skills. I get easily frustrated and I have been known to throw things across the room when they wouldn't work out in the allotted time. I have gotten better with age, but ever once in a while it might still happen today.



Early efforts. Blah.

After coming home from FFN I spun some more of the brown/white roving but it still hadn't really clicked. Getting bored with the colour I started spinning some of the green stuff. Hey, so much better! And when the spindle got heavy with the green, I taunted myself into trying the alpaca/silk mix. Surprise! Boy, does that stuff spin up well. Almost effortlessly, I am saying, trying not to think about the couple of not so thin parts in my single. I spun half of the roving, thinking I'll split it before spinning so I have the right amount to ply together in the end. I yet have to get to the other half.



Brown/white roving spun at home.



Ready to ply.



Green yarn. Much better.



Alpaca/silk. Was much to my delight easier to spin than expected.

When visiting the Roxham Wool Festival this year, I got some Merino/silk roving because I lurved the colours (try not to laugh, please) - and it is one of my favourite fibre mixes ever. I tried to spin some while still at FFN. Didn't work out that well. Turns out last night was a good night. I found that my hands finally knew what to do with the slick, slippery fibres and I got nice results.



Merino Silk roving. Like the colours?



First efforts at Fibre Fest. Not so good.



Yesterday: Oh, look! You can actually spin this stuff. Spinner's ecstasy!


Well, Ted and Lorraine, my mentors, what say you?

It's about a month since I took up the spindle first to make an earnest effort to produce usable results, but I only had picked up the spindle three times or so until three days ago. If my left hand (ring finger and small finger....ouch!) didn't hurt somewhat fierce (Nadine, I didn't listen.) I'd get lots more done. Now, what was that about a wheel?