Spinning, spinning...
The world, my life, my wheel.
I've started using my new (to me) spinning wheel. I started last night, and there was a lot of cursing as I tried to figure things out. As with all of my fiber exploits, I'm pretty much teaching myself as I go along, guessing at what I'm supposed to do from what I've seen other people do, what I've seen on the internet, and what I do when I spin on my drop spindle.
When I learned how to sing more than a decade ago, I remember how overwhelming it was. My teacher wanted me to remember to do what seemed like a hundred different things. I had to stand a certain way, clench some muscles but relax others, hold my head and shoulders a certain way, open my mouth correctly and use the correct shapes to sing vowel sounds. I was sure I'd never be able to master all of these things, but he assured me that eventually, it would all become second nature, and I would be able to just focus on hitting all the notes. Well, he was right.
So I'm not discouraged about spinning. As with singing, there are a hundred things that must be remembered. There's treadling (moving the foot pedal in such a way that the wheel keeps going in the proper direction), drafting, letting the twist run back but not run back too far, making sure not to keep a death grip on the yarn, and so on. But I know that, as with singing, eventually all of these things will come naturally.
Life, unfortunately, doesn't come naturally pretty much ever for me. I've got a lot of stress going at work right now, stuff I proably shouldn't go into. I'm trying to do NaNoEdMo, but I'm falling farther and farther behind. I pushed myself too hard last week and just had a total breakdown. Even knitting isn't much fun, anymore. Part of me is saying that the work stuff would be totally okay if I'd just lay off the writing for a while, but another part of me fears that if I start taking that way out, my novel will never be done -- I'll be one of those people who puts it off until it's too late.
At least I've started going to Curves again.
I've started using my new (to me) spinning wheel. I started last night, and there was a lot of cursing as I tried to figure things out. As with all of my fiber exploits, I'm pretty much teaching myself as I go along, guessing at what I'm supposed to do from what I've seen other people do, what I've seen on the internet, and what I do when I spin on my drop spindle.
When I learned how to sing more than a decade ago, I remember how overwhelming it was. My teacher wanted me to remember to do what seemed like a hundred different things. I had to stand a certain way, clench some muscles but relax others, hold my head and shoulders a certain way, open my mouth correctly and use the correct shapes to sing vowel sounds. I was sure I'd never be able to master all of these things, but he assured me that eventually, it would all become second nature, and I would be able to just focus on hitting all the notes. Well, he was right.
So I'm not discouraged about spinning. As with singing, there are a hundred things that must be remembered. There's treadling (moving the foot pedal in such a way that the wheel keeps going in the proper direction), drafting, letting the twist run back but not run back too far, making sure not to keep a death grip on the yarn, and so on. But I know that, as with singing, eventually all of these things will come naturally.
Life, unfortunately, doesn't come naturally pretty much ever for me. I've got a lot of stress going at work right now, stuff I proably shouldn't go into. I'm trying to do NaNoEdMo, but I'm falling farther and farther behind. I pushed myself too hard last week and just had a total breakdown. Even knitting isn't much fun, anymore. Part of me is saying that the work stuff would be totally okay if I'd just lay off the writing for a while, but another part of me fears that if I start taking that way out, my novel will never be done -- I'll be one of those people who puts it off until it's too late.
At least I've started going to Curves again.