glorious spinning

I finally bought the additional yellow yarn for the Project Linus blanket. I can't say I was happy to be buying more of this yarn, but they had the same dye lot after lo these many months, so I really can't complain. Progress resumed on that last night; maybe I'll be able to finish it tonight at the final meeting of the blankie brigade.
I finished some pretty difficult things yesterday, not the least of which being the taxes. In celebration, even though it was kind of late, I decided to spin some of the Hoobody roving. Remember this?


I had been saving it until I got a little better with the wheel, but last night I decided I was ready.
Dudes. This fiber is so totally awesome I can't even tell you. First of all, it looks from the outside like it's mostly pastel colors, but when you open it up and fuzz it out some, it looks like this.


Lots of gorgeous, rich colors in there. Also, this fiber has very long staple length. I'm not kidding. I grabbed the roving and tried to pull it apart, and I could not get it to break unless I held my hands about two feet apart. It wouldn't even budge. The stuff I've been working with has a much, much shorter staple length. Honestly, I would have had no idea what to do or resorted to cutting it with scissors to get a piece off to spin if I hadn't had a similar experience with the roving at the Spinning with Color class.
So I got a piece separated off, fluffed it up, and separated it lengthwise into a lot of thin strips. I put on some tunes and started spinning it, and let me tell you, it spun like a dream! It practically drafted itself, and the yarn came out all even and nice. Really incredible. Check it out.


Does that or does that not look like I suddenly got a whole lot better at spinning?! I'm not sure I'll be going back to the cheap fiber. Also, notice how the singles are distributed evenly across the whole bobbin. Did I suddenly get a Woolie Winder or something? No. Actually, I really don't know how that happened. I just started spinning, and kind of regained consciousness half an hour later when I ran out of fiber. (That's why I wanted to break off a piece--I need some sleep for work!) At that point, I thought "hey, I never moved the butterfly clip but it never stopped taking up the yarn; I wonder how little yarn this is?" I looked, and the yarn wasn't even through the butterfly clip or the cup hook, just through the delta orifice. Yet it never tangled once, just distributed itself all perfectly over the bobbin as I spun. Altogether, it was an evening of spinning magic.