Spinning and Weaving Blurring Together Now

The spinning adventure went into high gear with the arrival of the bag of roving ends, and I recommend it as a terrific low cost way of testing all kinds of roving to see what you like.  I'm finding that some of them are resistant and hard to spin, while others are ready to spin themselves, and look much more like the yarn in the pictures.

So maybe it's not always the spinner. Maybe it's sometimes the preparation of the fiber.  Anyway, what's happening now is that I'm working on a small weaving, and when I want to change color, I paw through the bag of roving and spin up what I need.  This is so much more my style than planning and setting up, and is a lot of fun.  It really is like having a palette of color to go to.  And that includes mixing fibers to change the color.

This weaving was interrupted by a friend showing up with an out of town friend in tow, wanting to show her the artworks around here.  I heard the friend saying, shouldn't we have called ahead?  and being assured that we have an arrangement. Which is true. If it were not a good time, I'd say so, no hard feelings.  But as it was it was great to show this new person around, and have her ask interesting questions about what she saw.   Actually I think she liked the kitchen backsplash as much as anything...

So, this weaving now has more added in to it, a dark blue, and some of my plied blue and white. I think I'll weave over the top of the loom and down the back, to length it.  It's shaping up like a landscape.  There will be more beads added, probably.  Meanwhile, it's really engrossing and taking over from a lot of other things.

I keep on browsing online about spindles and the latest interest, a kick spindle.  Wondering if it would help my spinning. But then I remember that drafting is drafting no matter how the spindle is held, and no number of handy toys will improve that.  But I'm still wondering about it.  

And if you google on it, you may find yourself in an automotive rabbit hole.  Evidently it's also the name of some part of a car!  which explains my total confusion when I tried to see kick spindles and was looking at bits of machinery which didn't seem likely to lend themselves.  Also googling on spinning tends to take you to local gyms. This reminds me of a long ago convo with a guy, to whom a Singer was a kind of car, and to me a kind of sewing machine.

And, since the lovely birthday bouquet has finally wilted, after sticking around for many days, I was able to save out some petals for future dyeing, here the red carnations and the stripey tulips.

 
 These are now in the freezer ready for the next dyeing caper.