When the student is ready, the teacher appears

 In this case the teacher, or a series of them, is the collection of roving ends I'm spinning into plied yarn.

As you see from the cardboard tubes with spun singles on them, waiting for plying, spinning has been going on.  This represents quite a bit of spinning time.

And as always, art materials teach us as much as we're willing to learn from them.  In the case of spinning waste roving ends and tops, as I'm doing, each one has a different texture, different need from the last.

You get the hang of one lot, then it's spun, and you're onto the next, which is different, needs to be handled and drafted differently. 

 I find that if I listen and watch, the roving itself shows me how to go on.  If it's very fuzzy and long stapled, it will ask to be picked up and drafted in finer amounts, as long as the yarn doesn't break, and the turquoise one is one of those.  It ended up spinning just a treat, once I got over my dismay at wondering if I could spin this fuzz at all.

Then the red one, a different sort of roving, silkier, I think a mix, easy to draft and spin, and just very willing to cope with me.

But the yellow, ah, another thing entirely.  A horse, or yarn, of a different color. I think it's silk, judging from the way it snags on my winter hands and the luster and intensity of the color. 

There are little knotty areas in it which are resistant to be undone.  At first I got a bit impatient about this, and wanted to smooth everything out, then I realized that it's better to address the nature of the roving before forcing it to do what I planned.

This worked better for both of us, and there are little slubs here and there, okay, probably they won't even be evident once it's plied, we'll see.  And I did think that if I made cloth dolls, this would make fabulous shiny blonde hair.  

The Dollivers, whom you saw here are all knitted, so their hair is yarn, in keeping with the rest of their bodies.  And, if ever you want to amuse yourself with simple knitting that is also fun, try one of them. They're not difficult, but, as with all dollmaking, their character emerges as you work.  Before they're finished, they have personalities.  It's a little eerie.

Here's where to find the Dollivers' origin, and the other animals I mentioned in the Thanksgiving post linked above.

The Knitted Babes are pretty accessible to beginning knitters with basic knowledge.  The animals do require some experience and the ability to follow more complex directions.  But as you saw from my results, they do work.

Back to roving.  This is a visual adventure, quite aside from being a productive one.  I've learned better spinning, better understanding of different rovings, just from observing and working with them rather than knowing ahead of time what they actually are by name.

I think this is a helpful way to learn, in fact.  Once you name a thing you've basically stopped learning about it. Your brain thinks, well, that's sorted, then, no need for further thought, and it stops.

This is why you don't name what you're drawing as you draw it.  In fact, when I used to guide students, I never named parts of their work at all, so as not to disturb their drawing understanding. I'd refer to "this passage" or "that section" without naming, and it was more useful for their continued learning rather than labeling and filing it away never to be considered again.

One of my friends, a naturalist, pointed out that there's an exception to this avoiding of naming, which is in the case of a plant. If you can find out the name, that's what you need in order to learn more about its taxonomy, origins, discoverer, cultivation, all that.  So I conceded that, since I've done it myself.

When you're creating though, better not. You see better when you don't clutter up your vision with a bunch of nouns. And just enjoying the textures and colors is plenty to be going on with.