Spinning Friday: Happy Hooves Shetland

I got an early holiday present this week. I had been looking at the Hansen mini-spinner for a while, to have something really portable to use (I normally lug a wheel up and down a flight of stairs if I want to spin upstairs - which I do a lot in the colder months in lieu of building a second fire in the downstairs den at night), and D and I discussed it and he thought that'd be a great present for me this year.  (And he didn't have to do any shopping for it!)  I wanted to try the spinner out with a relatively easy-to-spin fiber, so I went stash diving and came up with this:

This is 4 oz of Shetland roving from the Happy Hooves club February 2012 (which I got in a trade for something a while back - can't even remember what), dyed in the "Conversational Hearts" colorway.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that it didn't take much adjustment or adaptations on my part to get comfortably settled into a rhythm on the mini-spinner.   I worked thru most of the first 2 oz of singles the first night I spent with it.

I'm spinning up the second 2 oz with small stripped lengths to ply with this first bobbin for a fractal spin.  I opted to get the Woolee Winder option, which it turns out I LOVE.  It's great not to have to stop and start to change bobbin hooks and I like how evenly it winds the yarn on.  I do miss having that sort of meditative noise of the treadle, but that's a fairly small note.  This product spins really nicely and evenly with only a minimum of work on my part.  Happy holidays to me!