Adventures in spinning!
It turns out I probably need a lighter drop spindle, since the one I got from my friend is about 3 oz. and on the heavy end. This won't be as much of a problem when I learn how to ply; apparently heavy is a good thing then.
In any case, here is the spindle and yarn:
1 oz of Polwarth wool (linked to the vendor's blog) plus the spindle. The wool is fantastically soft, and I bookmarked her page, even though I'm planning to try out Merino or something more traditional next. In all honesty I picked hers because it was inexpensive and undyed--even if this yarn sucks (which it looks like it will, because it's my first attempt and I'm teaching myself off of Youtube) I'm planning to try and dye it just to learn how.
Half an hour and lots of cursing later, I had a length of not very twisty yarn tied to the leader yarn. Currently, the yarn I have is lumpy as hell. I think I'm figuring it out, though--if I go glacially slow and make sure to roll everything onto the spindle just right, the yarn stays mostly even. Still bulkier than the yarn I usually work with, though. It's okay. First attempt.
I spent most of last night trying to work out what I was doing wrong exactly to make my yarn so crappy, which I think means that this is eating my life. I've decided to take it a little at a time, knit in the meanwhile so I'm doing something I know I'm good at (or at the very least, not completely awful at), and I'll show up to the yarn store in League City on Saturday and hang around and see if they can offer pointers.