Ouch.

So, for the past six weeks, I've been kickboxing. At least three times a week, and hour each day. Sweating my 42-year-old, out-of-shape arse off and working muscles that have flagrantly been sitting around eating metaphorical bonbons and watching soaps. And in six weeks? Nary an injury. Sore muscles, sure, and one strange foot pain that comes and goes, but other than that, I've gotten through unscathed.

Contrast: I've owned a spinning wheel since Friday morning. My lower back is tight. My middle back has a huge knot in it. My neck has a kink. My shoulders are aching. I have a headache. WTF?? C'mon! Seriously?? Punching and kicking I can handle, but treadling a wheel and drafting wool does me in? This hardly seems right. 

I'm loving the wheel, though, aches and pains notwithstanding. I gave up on what I will now officially term as "crap roving" that I bought when I first started with a drop spindle. Couldn't spin it on the spindle, couldn't spin it on the wheel, so the heck with it. It was cheap, and therein, I believe, lies the problem. I moved on to the remainder of the batt of Sanguine Gryphon merino/silk I started spindling a while back. (It's up in my blog banner, too.) Oh. My. God. It spun like a dream! The fiber is awesome. The spinner? Not so awesome. I'm still learning, to be sure. Plenty of inconsistencies in it...too thin parts and too thick parts and parts that are odd and blumpy (which I think should be a technical spinning term). But I did far better than I thought I'd be able to do, and I managed to ply about 107 yards of yarn today. (Pictures coming soon!)

Tonight I moved on to some roving I bought from Briar Rose Fibers not long ago. It is bluefaced leicester, and I'm starting to catch on to this whole "different fibers spin differently" thing. It took a little while to get into a comfortable groove with it because it definitely handles differently than the merino/silk blend, but once I got going, it went really well. I've got a LOT of this fiber, so it will take me a while (I think) to get through it all, but the colors are beautiful -- browns, greens, burgundies -- and I love to watch them as they spin together, and they'll be a whole other brand of happy once I get to plying them. 

Another thing I'm tickled about is that I'm spinning this fiber far finer than I ever, ever thought I'd be able to! My ultimate desire is to spin finer weight yarns...fingering and DK, maybe some worsted weight. I enjoy playing with chunky and thick & thin handspuns I buy occasionally (like the ones Cosy spins, which are always so pretty!), but that's not what I really want to spin. I know it's going to take a while to get consistent in my spinning, but I think I'm doing pretty well. 

Now if I can just avoid turning into a pretzel, I can continue to enjoy it all.