Oh no! I have a new hobby!

As if knitting and sewing and dancing and riding and hiking and running and making stamps and making purses and and and weren't enough, a friend has introduced me to spinning. Oh no! I didn't quite realize it at the time, but this is a strangely addictive process. It's easy to do while watching TV (way easier than knitting -- no counting or remembering where you left off), and you end up making something beautiful. I've long suspected that my attraction to knitting and sewing in general has more to do with just being in love with colors ... I actually have a color swatch book that I can spend hours looking at, just marveling over the different ways colors come together. And that's why fabric stores are so dangerous for me, since I love to just have the pieces of fabric to marvel at, and rarely do anything with them!
So this friend brought over her spinning wheel and let me give it a whirl. After a few moments of total spazzhood, I did manage to get a bit of a rhythm going, but didn't really get the process until she handed me my very own drop spindle to keep! I think that it's a pretty good idea to learn how to do this on a drop spindle, just because though it's more complicated to control all the aspects of the process by hand, it's important to learn all the aspects of the process and learn how they need to be controlled for your rhythm.
Anyway, I did some looking around, and this site shows you how to make your own drop spindle out of a dowel and some cds. It's just like the one my friend gave me, and I think it works pretty good. The only thing I've done differently is I added a couple hair clips to opposing edges of the cds because the extra weight makes it spin for a significantly longer time, which I appreciate. I never thought I'd enjoy this quite as much as I am enjoying it, and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes to have something to do with her hands while still "zoning out" at the end of a long day.