Not a lot of knitting happened this weekend, although I did pass the halfway mark on the second Calorimetry. I also sewed some panels of fabric for work—we are recovering a partition and couldn't find fabric that we liked that was wide enough. I also wound my Monsoon yarn into two balls in preparation for knitting the socks from the Rockin' Sock Club and wound the Rio yarn for the Fauxbios Shawl.
Mostly, I played with my spinning, in one way or another. Several months ago I had purchased a wool roving from a closeout bin in a local yarn store. It was inexpensive and I figured it would be good to use for practice. I've gotten tired of spinning the sample-size rovings and wanted to try something larger. I pulled out my bargain and started spinning it.
My goal was to spin this thinner than my previous attempts. So far I've achieved a 2-ply bulky (5) weight yarn, something bordering on Medium (4), and I'd like to work my way to Light (3) weight, or finer. Over the course of the weekend, I spun half of the roving, and prepped the other half for spinning. Here are the results of my weekend:

(Yes, that's a plastic straw. it was the perfect size to slip my spun fiber off the spindle without having to unwind it.)
In between, I researched various homemade "Lazy Kate"s on the web. I came across this entry that showed a Lazy Kate using a plastic basket. I already had the basket, the needles, and the point protectors. I rigged it up and plied the two singles that I had spun earlier in the week.

Now, I don't have bobbins, just spun fiber on plastic straws, and it was not a great deal of yarn to ply. However, I could see why you want to tension stuff after plying the yarns. So, I went off to Michael's with my 40% off coupon in hand. A visit to the wood aisle got me four toy wheels and four candle cups; a visit to the knitting aisle got me two 14-inch size 3 needles that would fit though the holes of the toy wheels and the candle cups plus a set of larger point protectors.
Back home, I glued the wheels to the candle cups; cut off the tips of two point protectors; and found some elastic in my stash. Here is my assembled Lazy Kate:

When I finish spinning the second half of the roving, I'll try it out!
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