Yesterday’s much-anticipated third spinning lesson was… interesting. Though I’d successfully continued drop-spindling the green-blue roving just before setting out, once I got there I seemed to lose my spinning mojo.

But first, we dyed the skeins we’d spun and plied in previous classes:

I’m not especially enamoured of the dye job, to be honest. It’s very patchy. There are some well saturated bits, and some where dye didn’t penetrate the skein well enough, either because there wasn’t enough dye or the wool resisted taking it up. It was dyed using the “put skein on plastic wrap, drop dye on it, wrap up and steam” method. I’m very tempted to give it a dip in a pot of blue dye, to even out the colour and see whether it is a resistance issue.

Then we tried spinning roving. I struggled and struggled, either getting hideously overspun singles or breakage. Just couldn’t get the tension right. It was disappointing after the success I’ve been having with roving spun on the drop spindle.

I’m afraid this will probably go in the bin. There’s slubby yarn, and then there’s yarn like a dog’s dinner.

Thankfully, we went on to learn carding, making rolags and mixing colours. Until then I’d been wondering if buying these had been a mistake:

Definitely not. I found it was easier to spin from a rolag than tops. Which was probably why I then succumbed to these:

I think I have enough roving now that I can start referring to it as ‘stash’.