Something about spinning

Lots to do this week, so reduced blogging, but I have been fitting crafting in, of course, it would take a major earth shaking event to stop that. I have managed to start the second half of my spinning project. This single will have the beads spun into it.

I wanted to make an attempt at spacing the beads evenly through the single. This is far from exact but I divided the length of roving up into eighty lengths, one for each bead. There are obvious differences between the lengths so the spacing will not be totally even. At least I will not have masses in one place and none in others, which is what would happen if I left it up to chance.

I have spun a few of the lengths, as with the first single it is thinner than planned, but that makes sense as I am now trying to approximately match the first one. The beads are going in nicely, adding them at the end of the length when it thins out a bit seems to be working. This photo is not great as the flash overpowered the beads, but you can see that there are beads.

Hopefully I will have time at the weekend to make good progress on this single. Once again I am having the dilemma between enjoying the crafting time, but at the same time wanting it to be done already so I can see the finished outcome. I really have no patience! :D

Something about spinning

I am posting this on Friday because I was not organised enough to get it done yesterday and I want something for the Fibre Arts Friday link party.

During the tour de fleece I took part in a challenge with the Wonder Why team, spinning beads into yarn. The beads are threaded onto a small piece of fibre and this is drafted into the single as you go. The second plain ply helps to hold the beads in place.

I was lucky enough to win the prize draw and received a lovely parcel from Dutch Hollow acres. It is some beautiful wool/alpaca blend dyed green with gorgeous purple tones. Some of the fibre has been prethreaded onto gold and purple beads to be spun into the singles.

I have divided the fibre into two and started spinning the slightly larger piece without beads. I was aiming for something much thicker than usual but it seems to be spinning fairly thin. You would think as the spinner I might get a say but it seems the fibre has other ideas.

More of this next week, hopefully I will have made lots of progress on this single.

Tour de fleece day 12

This morning I spun the second ply for beaded yarn challenge. I used a different fibre for this one, it is a superwash merino.

I didn't get the quanittiy quite right so there is still a little of the beaded single unspun 

I have been enjoying using my spindle during the tour, it is more convenient for picking up and doing a few minutes than my wheel. Unfortunaly plying this by spindle was a bit of a nightmare, there may have been a bit too much twist in the singles, they goet seriously tangled and snarled. I will be plying by wheel in the future no matter how the singles are made. 

A close up since you can't see the beads in the picture above.

I ended up with about 27m, the beads are fairly evenly spaced along the length apart from one point which is missing the bead, the single broke by the bead and it went flying off.

I have also prepped the fibre for my next TdF project. It is the main portion from the blue and black that I spun today. I have divided it into half then one of the halves into lots of very thin strips, it will be a two ply sock hopefully.

The colours did not come out quite as well as I hoped in the photo. It looks lovely all fluffed out on the airer I am using to hold my fibre. Hopefully I can get the colours too stay looking nice once it is spun, there is a bit of a risk of it all blending together to give a greyish colour.

In non tour news I appear to be addicted to pretzls. Fortunately I only have one bag so when they are gone the addiction is over. I am not even sure why because they make me really thirsty (like take a bite, have a drink, repeat thirsty), they are tasty though.

Tour de fleece day 11

Today I spun up the beaded roving from yesterday. I have been enjoying the different fibres but it is nice to spin something colourful.

Adding the beads was not too bad, although I quite often missed the extra little strand of fluff that stops them sliding around.

See, beads on yarn, although you can't actually tell that they have been spun on, but I promise I did not cheat and thread them on a finished single.

Tour de fleece day 10- rest day

Today is a rest day for the tour de france cyclists, so it is a rest day for the tour de fleece spinners too. The rest day is optional, but it has given me a chance to catch up on some of the blog reading, some knitting and prepping some beads for DutchHollow's challenge to all the members of the TdF Wonder why spinning team.

The challenge is to follow the tutorial from fibre arts Friday and spin some beads into a yarn. I have threaded about twenty beads onto some Shetland fibre to have a little trial run. I used a length of tiger tail beading wire rather than a needle threader as I didn't have one to hand.

I am not sure if we should be using alpaca for this challenge, but I had purple beads and blue Shetland available.

I still have not caught up on the blog posts and am a little behind on my N sock as well, lots of crafting in the evenings this week!