This is the part where I pretend I know what I'm doing.

Today was finally the day I got to try spinning on my new spindle. I guess the best phrase to use would be that it was a "learning experience". I mean, I didn't expect it to be perfect or anything. It was really fun, despite the result looking like crap. You can't just go from exactly what a book or site tells you to do, either. It seems like a lot of skill in spinning comes from intuition and experience. I have neither. But I learned a bunch. Here's a really terrible picture of my first day's worth of spinning that alpaca (the brown). I'm sorry it's so horrible, my camera really is awful. There's a new one that'll be heading my way within the next week and a half, though.

I know you can't see it, but there is a visible learning curve on the spindle. The first bits I spun varied from so thin it was breaking to having virtually no twist in it at all. And in the last hour I was spinning today, I finally started to get the hang of things - learning that if you want your yarn to look the same, then you actually have to have the same conditions for all of it - it doesn't just magically happen. I look forward to doing it again tomorrow. I'm just worried about the twist factor. This yarn I created seems to be way way way over twisted. When I put it in a skein, it all bunches up on itself, and I can see little squiggles ALL OVER the skein where yarn is forming twists. I have yet to find that "happy place" where the yarn is adequately twisted, but will not curl on itself so much.

Also, I know I missed posting yesterday, but I did take my picture! It was at around 11:30 PM, but I remembered. You can't really see it at all because my camera sucks. But Nathan and I went to play board games at a friend's house, so I grabbed the camera and took a blurry picture of him reading the rules. Riveting, I know.

I hope that once I get a new camera, my "365" images will be a little more pleasant to look at. I promise, I DO know what a good picture looks like. Really. Probably.

No knitting today, because today was devoted to spinning. I'm only about halfway through the cable yoke of the luxe sweater. It takes me almost a half hour to do one 16-row pattern repeat! And I'm not even using a cable needle! That sweater is going to take a while, but I think it'll be worth it. The more fabric I see coming from the needles, the more I love it. I'm very excited.

Now that I've blogged my first spinning efforts...it can only get better from here, I guess. Here's hoping!