So I was looking on Craigslist for roving because I'm learning to spin and want to practice more and I saw one post from one woman saying she had some roving available. I talked to her and she originally asked for 10.oo per lb. but then decided against it and said she'd just GIVE IT TO ME!!! I said ok...thinking that it was just a little...may enough for a sweater if I was lucky.

Hubby went off to get it today. It was a fairly long drive...about 45 minutes to an hour to get to her...and he loaded up the roving and gave her some cases of water (not sure why but hey, it MAY count as a payment?) and he left.

That was at 3:30pm and he came home at 11pm and tells me to go out and get the roving so I go out and this is what was in the trunk for me!! :

Holy hot potatoes!! Isn't that nuts?! It's beside my 6.5 foot tall Christmas tree for size comparison. I'm going to be spinning this roving for the rest of my life but it's absolutely BEAUTIFUL!! The pics were taken in really bad light but it's a lot prettier than it already looks. You'll have to trust me, LOL!

Learning to spin....

So I decided to try my hand at spinning because I really want to knit something out of handspun. I am thinking that I will most likely knit a gift for my husband for Christmas if I can get the yarn spun and plied in time to knit something up. It will probably be an iPod Cozy or something along those lines since I'm just a beginner and I don't think I can spin enough yarn quick enough to also knit it up for a larger project.

Here is my firsrt (horrible) attempt at spinning:

Not all that great huh? It came out very thick and thin but it averaged about a DK weight so I assumed I would get a worsted weight yarn but that did NOT happen. It came out a heavy bulky. I think I need to add more twist when I'm plying. I almost gave up because it looked hideous but I was told by a friend that I need to walk before I can run and to try again so I said ok and bought a new spindle so I had a reason to spin...but then I decided, last night, to try again and see what happened on my original spindle since my new spindle won't be delivered for 3-4 more days yet and this is what I got:

Much better right?! I think so. You can definitely see the difference in thickness from the pictures. I'm so glad that I'm learning to get thinner yarn. It's still a bit thick and thin but it's varying between lace weight and thick lace weight. Not too bad right?! I assume that it will be fingering weight when I'm done with the plying but who really knows.