Behold…the ugliest yarn you will ever see

Let me take you back to January 12, where I proudly displayed the pieces of an Ashford Traveller.  Driven to it by who knows what I finally today have an actual spinning wheel.  I usually don’t mind assembly much but this one was a bit of a challenge.  I really hate it when holes drilled for a particular screw can in no way accept said screw.  It makes me crazy.  It made me crazy today for a couple of hours!  When I finally finished I of course had no choice but to jump right in. 

Just to refresh your memory, I have never spun.  Not with a drop spindle, not with someone else’s wheel not with my fingers and stray bit of fiber.  Never.  How hard could it possibly be?  Well the IDEA of spinning, not so difficult…but the nuance…very difficult.  I REALLY should have watched the online videos first (um now that I actually look though, I don’t seem to have it bookmarked like I thought I did).  I don’t think I can officially call this yarn.  Yarn barf maybe, but not yarn.  Attempts two and three are only marginally better.  I’m blaming it at least partially on the crappy “practice” wool.  It’s very hard to draft!  In the very little I have read about spinning in the past, I always glossed over the whole “twist” stuff.  Turns out, that is pretty dang important.  Or at least that appears to be the case since my poor yarn barf is so twisted in places that it folds over on itself.  I can see really digging this whole process though once I get the hang of it.  If any of you spinners out there can point me in the direction of good online tutorials and such, I would really appreciate it. 

So briefly back to knitting and then a mystery.  I got my tiny sock finished last night…still haven’t found the “escapee”.  I’m going to go ahead and put the super tiny sock in the pakage to my swap pal.  Why not?  One can never have too many wee tiny socks, right?  For the mystery we have a package of pigs that found its way to my door yesterday.  No note although the box gratefully had the comany name…Moonstruck Chocolate.  I called them and it seems that Macy’s.com also sells thier stuff, which is where this package originated.  TWO calls to Macy’s and one back to Moonstruck and I still have no idea who sent this.  It’s been two and a half weeks since my surgery and it’s two and a half weeks until my birthday so I’m not even sure what it’s for either!  In any case, if whomever sent it happens to read this…THANK YOU!!!!  It is quite yummy and very cute.