What I've Learned

So far, as mentioned in previous posts, I've read Spin Control (speedily) and just over half of The Intentional Spinner. I promised a bit of an update about what I've learned so far and I think that's overdue at this point....
The Intentional Spinner has a very detailed explanation of each of the popular methods of spinning including worsted/short draw, woolen/long draw, semi-worsted, and semi-woolen.  From Judith's (the author) descriptions, I've determined that I'm a very confused spinner. I tend to jump from one method to another at random as I spin. I think I stick to worsted most often, but Judith's explanations also include fiber requirements for a yarn to be true worsted or true woolen. I don't know enough about the fiber I've used so far to know what I was doing there. Hence the confused spinner.
I think since my past results have fallen closest to worsted, I would like to figure out how to do woolen, but I'm unsure if any of the fiber I currently have would do well spun woolen (assuming I can figure out how to spin woolen consistently).

I was hoping to go to my local Holiday Fiber Festival to pick up some more roving to start practicing spinning and possibly spin some gift yarn for my knitting buddies, but alas, apparently they don't sell roving or top at the Holiday Fiber Festival - only finished items made out of it. Disappointing. I did pick up way more yarn than I can technically afford right now, so I've got a lot of knitting to do and not much spinning.

So what did I really learn? I re-learned what I already know: That I can't stick to one thing without getting distracted to save my life. But this time, I'm blaming it on the lack of spinning fiber. Since I don't exactly have much to spin, I don't want to waste what I have, so I'm allowing myself to focus on knitting for awhile instead of spinning. Which means that I've been posting on my other blog instead of this one about knitting since this blog is intended mainly for spinning. *looks at posted content* ... I said mainly, I'm not perfect.

And just to spin off topic a bit more... Along the writing vein of my last post I also learned something from my friend, Magz: Apparently keyboards were originally in alphabetical order, but were changed to the seemingly random order that they are in today when typist became too proficient and actually typed faster than the machines of the day could handle. It was someone's bright idea that mixing the letters up would result in people typing slower. Obviously, that only worked for so long before people once again got used to the order that the letters were in and began typing just as fast. That did get me thinking about just how someone chose the order that we're so familiar with today on all keyboards... makes me wonder if it really is completely random. If anyone reads this and knows or has an interesting guess as to how someone came up with the order of our keyboards, please share!