Drop Spindle and Pre-Drafting

I played with my drop spindle a little today. Taking the spinning wheel class has re-piqued my interest in it. I had stopped using the drop spindle because I was getting frustrated with it. Mainly with the drafting part.

So today I decided to pre-draft some roving for when I go back to the yarn shop to practice my spinning on their wheel. This is where you divide the roving lenthwise into thinner pieces and then keeping your hands about three inches apart pulling gently on the fibers to stretch them out. Be careful not to pull too much or you'll pull the pieces all the way apart and your roving will separate.

Balls of pre-drafted roving Afterwards I played with some of it on my spindle and the yarn was definitely getting better.

But then I was playing on youtube and found a video on the park and draft technique for the drop spindle that is fantastic and very informative. The combination of pre-drafting the roving and using this technique made a huge difference in the way my singles started coming out. They're still not perfect, but are becoming much more consistent. You can see at (almost) the top of the spindle where things started getting thinner and more consistent. The rest is not pretty, please consider it to be "art yarn". :)

I'm hoping that some of this will translate to the spinning wheel as well and I'll get more consistent results there as well.