Spinning a Yarn

Last night, I went to my first Spinning Class at Birkeland Bros (warning: 1.0 website glory ahead). You may have noticed, from my few scattered hints, that actually I'm kind of more enthralled by knitting and yarn and all things fibre-related these days than I am by, say, the iPhone that's giving everyone else a boner (not to say that I can't appreciate a hot hot piece of industrial design).

I am reeeeeally excited. :) Spinning wool into yarn is harder than it looks, and I found myself initially quite frustrated (you know that childish frustration when you just really can't get something that you really want to be able to do? Where you want to throw all the board game pieces across the room and stop upstairs to your bedroom and slam the door? like that), but then a little switch flicked and my body figured out how to keep the treadle going, not too fast, while my hands did the drafting thing, not too slow.

And then I actually made yarn! Oh yes I did. A small ball of plain natural coloured yarn, but yarn nonetheless. And I'm already excited about the possibilities ahead... I can start drooling over the things that are not yet yarn, in addition to drooling over yarn. (Yes, I really do love yarn. Not all yarn. But I love many yarns very much.)

It's a very meditative activity, which I think is part of the appeal. Once you get it, I can see how it becomes one of those "in the zone" activities. Very rhythmic, very satisfying.

I was wondering the other night whether I ought to start a whole new subsection of this blog for knitting-related rants, to save the non-knitting geeks in the crowd from having to suffer through my obsession. (Not that I'm under any illusion that the world needs MORE knitting blogs... oh it certainly does not. But still.) Darren advised me today that my personal website should be about things that are personally interesting to me, even if they are an extremely eclectic mix. So I'm not sure.... Thoughts??

Update: Well, I gotta say that I'm hugely amused and a little red-faced to discover that several hundreds thousands of people have clicked through to find out who the freak is who thinks that knitting is more exciting than the iPhone. Hello!! Welcome to my blog! Thank you Mr. Instapundit!

Interestingly, I will probably be the in the market for my first spinning wheel right around the same time that the iPhones get released... and they'll cost about the same. And so the true test will be which thing I decide to invest in... Stay tuned.