Balanced?

We have wheels.

We have fibre.  This is all Shetland Top from my back when I purchased my first Louet wheel, There is another bag of the cream just out of sight being prepped gently teased apart for spinning.  The top is much much easier to loosen out than any of the dyed fibres I have worked with.  It will take next to no time to prep.

And then it took a while.

I got everything set up on Thursday and was going to start spinning Friday on the S51, hoping to do it all on that wheel just for fun.  But the new drive band cannot be right. It was a standard band, but I have a feeling that these older wheels had a different height than they did at the end of their production. Even with zero tension on the brake, the smallest whorl, and a well oiled bit where the flyer rests, the single kept being yanked out of my hand.  It was simply too much pull.  I have to go back and either put on the old drive band, go to a cotton drive band that I make myself or wait till I get a new drive band that is right for the S51.   

I know me.  If I was going to do this Tour de Fleece ( #tdf2022teamivknmwooligans ) at all, I had to get spinning and it had to be now before anything built up inside my head and became a wall I would never climb.  So I made my mind up to spin on the Vic and ply on the S after I do whatever I end up doing.  And that was a very good choice.  It did mean I had to clean off a bobbin but spinning on my trusty Vic was effortless.  I confess, I was concerned.  Two years where you did not spin an inch is a long time, but it just came back and I had a great time.  Friday, my whole spin on the S was about 5 feet.  Saturday it was about 10.  But Sunday, lovely Sunday.

Sunday, late in the afternoon, I spun for a good half hour.  It went well and I stopped lest I get too cocky.  I debated about doing some more after supper.  

After supper, I sat down to spin again.  It felt right and I was relaxed and calm.  And it was lovely.  Spinning could easily become an evening joy.  This modified long draw I am doing is allowing me to bring the drafting close so I can easily see what is going on.   Spinning may very well be the perfect solution for long, too quiet evenings.  An hour or so of spinning in the evenings and then a bit of prepping for the next day, be it combing, carding, or even just floofing out prepared top would fill an eveing nicely and would fit well in the routine of my days.  If I could keep up spinning in the evening, it won't take long till the fleece I have, gets their turn.  And once the fleece get their turn, I can pick up more pretty fleece.  Now that sounds like fun.

Now before all the spinning joy was  F1.  Honest, if a race was any better than that, I don't think my heart could take it.  There was a serious accident at the start, where Zhou's car slid through the gravel upside down for a very, very long way and then flipped and got stuck between the tire barrier and the fence.  The first thing you think if no way is he coming out of that alive.  And but for the safety halo that was put on the car three years ago, he wouldn't have.  His roll bar was ground off in the slide, but the halo kept him away from the grinding surface.  There was no fire and the biggest struggle was to get him out from how jammed he was between the tire barrier and the car itself.  He went to hospital and was cleared and was back on track before the race was done.  There was another smaller looking high speed crash sort of connected to Zhou's  and Alex hit a wall hard and straight head on.  Alex ended up in hospital for observation because of the g forces involved and the possibility of concussion, but he was tweeting from his bed by the end of the race.  No human in their right mind wants a crash.  No human can look away.  I wonder about our species.

And then there was the race.  It was quite simply epic.  It was close and the passing and the back and forth was beyond breathtaking.  A late safety car meant that for the last 15 laps any of seven cars could have conceivably had second or third place.  It was epic and I had just the best time.  Calros Sainz won and he massively deserved it.  He had to fight the whole way and it was brilliant.  But if races keep on like this wonderful thing, I need to change my blood pressure meds.  Just sayin.

If I could fit spinning into a daily routine, sewng or weaving (I have already decided that) or something visually complicated in the morning like embroidery, knitting in the afternoons, spinning in the evenings could be just right.  It almost sounds like balance.  My always and forever reading has come back to me in every form.  I have found a sport I really really enjoy and did even as a girl.  And all the fiber things.  It really almost sounds like a balanced sort of life.  Wow.  Did not think that was going to happen.