Weather
The weather has been very... changeable. This weekend it was warm and sunny. And rainy. And sunny. And warm. We went for a hike in the woods where it was muddy. We decided to hike back along the road where it wasn't muddy, instead of retracing our steps. Some mud was (reasonably) fun, but lots would have been overkill.

Then, on Monday, it thundered and poured. It was windy and rainy. Just before sunset, the clouds broke in the west and we had the first sunshine all day.
Today is much of the same, wild winds followed by much precipitation, only it's now about 30 degrees colder and the precipitation is snow. No thunder at the moment, but we are promised more.

New spindle
I've admired these spindles at Gaustad studio for some time. I never asked questions about them; the blurb mentioned "designed for flax" and I gave a mental sigh of relief. I have no interest in flax, I don't want to spin it, don't need that spindle. Then Sylvia mentioned them in conjuction with "silk". Ok, silk. I'm paying attention now.

I have the silky oak one mentioned as "good for cotton or fine silk". It is doing just fine with tussah silk. The bottom whorl slides off and you can spin with it either way. I had to take the bottom whorl off to learn to spin on it, but now that I have the trick down, it works like a charm with or without the bottom whorl. Stephenie gave me a few tips and tricks with it which helped, but the single biggest thing after "roll it up (or down) your thigh" that makes a difference is rolling it up my thigh with just the tip end, rather than the side of the shaft. This is not how I spin other thigh rollers, but makes a big difference in the wobble factor on this one. It isn't yet habit to do it with this one so I always have a moment of "what? Oh yeah" when I start spinning with it.