Spinning Love

NOW I GET IT.
My first attempt on some llama stuff my friend gave me to practice on:

Not much there but I'm still very proud of it! It's funny how much I screwed up but I'm still having a blast! I couldn't get my tension quite right the whole time, I over-twisted TONS, and I could hear Helen telling me to feed my yarn to the wheel because I tend to forget. But every now and then: -*~Magic Happened~*-.  Things just "flowed" for a few seconds here and there and I was in total love.  My end result is not nearly as neat and pretty as my friend Helen's, and I had to keep reminding myself that what she spun first for me with this stuff looked JUST FINE and it wasn't the WHEEL'S FAULT but rather my own shortcomings.

See:

Looks like I have a whole other animal here! I don't know if this is normal for many new spinners but from the DVD I got from Interweave Knits, she said it's not unusual for spinners to have bits and pieces they've had to remove all around their feet, so I didn't feel quite as bad once this pile built up. (I'm still learning pre-drafting too.)

This is the wheel my wonderful friend Helen let me borrow for the summer. It's a discontinued Ashford but she said it's similar to a Kiwi. It's got a harder treadle than the Ashford Traditional she let me borrow the last time, and it feels sluggish compared to the jet-speed of her Joy. But I'm just so grateful for the opportunity to even TRY it I'm over the moon! 

I'm thinking a "double treadle" is the way I'm going to go though. I just hope I can finally test one out one day to really determine that. My right leg is my "bad" leg, so balancing it out would be better for me in the long run (as well as starting and stopping the wheel). As it is, I only spend less than 10 minutes at a time on this one before I get tired. 

I have some pink merino waiting in the wings....that should be interesting!