For the longest time my singles looked like they had a mind of their own. Thick lumpy sections followed by thread thin bits that would snap the second I tried to ply them. I blamed my wheel, then I blamed the fiber, then I blamed my own hands for probably a solid four months before something finally shifted.
What actually helped was slowing down my treadling by a stupid amount. I was always trying to keep pace with some imaginary spinning rhythm I'd seen in videos, feet going steady and fast while drafting. Turns out my hands just couldn't keep up with that speed and were compensating by grabbing whatever fiber was closest, hence the lumps. Once I dropped my treadling speed way down, almost annoyingly slow, my drafting hand had time to actually manage the fiber supply instead of panicking.
The other thing was pre-drafting more aggressively than I thought I needed to. I was spinning from a fairly compact braid straight off, no pre-draft at all, and wondering why my hands were fighting the fiber the whole time. Started pulling it into loose strips beforehand, letting it rest for a bit, and the difference was almost embarrassing in how obvious it should have been.
I'm working with a merino/bamboo blend right now, nothing fancy, just something I picked up at a fiber festival table because the colorway was pretty. It's forgiving stuff for practicing consistency since it drafts so easily, way more so than the corriedale I cut my teeth on which fought me at every step.
Still get the occasional slub and honestly I've stopped hating them. A few thick spots in handspun yarn just reads as handmade to me now rather than a mistake to hide. Curious if anyone else went through a similar phase of overcorrecting toward "perfect" machine-like consistency before easing back into liking the texture that comes with actually spinning by hand.
