Spinning is Hard

With a wheel, that is.

I don't know why I thought spinning with a wheel would be easier than with a drop spindle. The spindle was hard to use at first, but I feel like after a few sessions with it I showed some improvement.

I played with that frickin' wheel yesterday for half an hour and I was so mad and frustrated that I wanted to cry. I think I might have on the inside a little bit. I don't usually get so mad when I'm learning a new craft. I usually want to practice and practice and practice until I get it right. Trust me, if I could rechannel my crafting OCD into sports, I'd be a champion. I'd have gold medals. I'd be Tigertigertiger Woods y'all. I'd be Mark Spitz. I'd be Dale Fuckin' Earnhardt.

Why does spinning have me by the balls? Why am I not feeling the love? I was so sure I'd be good at it, too.

I'm going to try again this morning, and every morning until I'm out of roving. If, by the time I've worked through all this fiber I still have nothing resembling yarn, the wheel is going back. Or I'll sign up for a class and learn hands on from an instructor. Who can pet me and give me pointers. After all, I had to take a class to learn to knit. I'm not self-taught there. (Again with the OCD. Are you seeing a pattern? Pack it in? Heck no! Find a better coach!)

So I packed it in with the wheel yesterday and soothed my soul with my knitting. I showed you those cute turquoise baby slippers I made, remember? Buggy wants some. Well, Buggy wasn't home so I made some for Bobo. I used two strands of worsted held together on size 8 needles and they knit up pretty quick. I used navy blue and a washed denim blue for these. Don't look too closely, but they're not the same. I couldn't remember what I did when I got to the second one so I had to count rows as best I could and just sort of winged it from there. Today I did promise a pair for Bug. I'm going to use dark red for the sole and pink for the uppers. And perhaps I'll jot down some numbers as I go along so that they match when I'm done.

Other than that, I didn't accomplish a whole lot. I was sulking about my spinning attempts. Truly.

I didn't have to cook supper, which was a plus. It was casserole night last night, and Ma made macaroni and cheese and as an added bonus, she bought KFC extra crispy chicken to have with it! Oh, it was so good. Finger lickin' in fact. The girls got to have a bath at Grammie's which for some reason is better than Christmas to them. I mean, they usually love to take a bath anyway, but it's just so much better at Gram's. It did get the chicken and Oreo crumbs off them. (Grammie's house rocks!)

Today it seems that Tropical Depression Barry has moved along and we woke up this morning to 50 degrees, breezy and sunny. It figures. I've spent the past two days trying to get wool mittens to dry in my damp, dark kitchen. They finally dry, I get them packaged up, and what happens? We get sun and wind. They'd dry in ten minutes today.

I had every intention of sending them out yesterday afternoon. I should have jumped up the second L. came in, bagged them, and run them up to the PO. But I wanted them to have every last second I could get to make sure they were good and dry. So at 4:30, knowing full well that the PO closes at 5, I stacked them neatly, put them in ziplock bags, and turned the computer on to retrieve the address. I had shut it off because of passing thunderstorms.

I'm not saying I've got something wrong with this thing, but it took a full half hour for the computer to come to live enough so that I could get into my yahoo mail without freezing everytime I touched the mouse.

Suffice it to say that I missed the post office by two minutes. Two. Not five. Two. Summanabatch.

I blame my problems on TrendMicros virus scan program. I installed it when I bought the computer and it worked great for a year. Then I renewed and downloaded the updated version and the computer has sucked ever since. I've been putting up with this for 9 months now. And with God as my witness, as soon as it expires, I'm wiping my system clean of it and getting a different virus scan program altogether. Not because of the errors, though. I understand that sometimes software has bugs and stuff that need to get worked out. I can deal with that. I'm switching because their customer service was horrible. I can't even count how many phone calls I've made to Bangalore, only to have them start at the beginning and tell me to try stuff I've already done. I've sent countless emails, all to no avail. They've stopped responding to my written communication altogther.

So, TrendMicros, I wash my hands of you. You had your shot and you blew it.

And another thing: I no longer worship at the altar of Bill Gates. I swear to all things holy that my next computer will be a Mac, so help me God.