I had little spinning time yesterday since I was rearranging Miss Bug’s room with the help of Marja. Really only about a half hour. The room, just like TdF, has an end date. A date where everything MUST be complete. And I am getting fairly close to it too.

So, what needs to give? TdF. I’ll continue spinning each day, but it is becoming ever so clear to me that my cabled yarn will not be completed during the tour.

This is my grand progress from yesterday. It’s pathetic. As is the state of my house, due to the fact that I am working exclusively on Bug’s room. There are SOCKS in that picture! I have, however, learned a few things. 20 minutes of spinning here and there does count. I do get more done than I expect to when I sit down for 20 minutes to spin. In the past, I would always say “20 minutes? Why bother!” but, since the point of the tour is to spin every day, and I only have 20 minutes, I do it anyway. And it is more  productive than I imagined.

The other thing I’ve learned is that waking up early to spin is pointless for me. Spinning first thing in the morning makes my hands ache and fall asleep. Spinning in the evening does not. So, the times I’ve woken up an hour early to put in an hours worth of spinning only actually yield me about 20 minutes of spinning. So, no more of that!

As for Bug’s room progress, let me show you one of the things we did last night! I am so excited about it. You see, Miss Bug, who turned 10 yesterday, still had a toddler plastic toy bin/bookshelf and a changing table in her bedroom. Granted, the changing table was used for toy storage, but still, it wasn’t appropriate for a tween room. I also had used her closet as storage for me. So, the goal was to get rid of the inappropriate furnishings, clean out the closet, give that over to her, and add appropriate furnishings. Miss Marja had some bookshelves she was tired of, and wanted to give to Bug. Along with a bunch of other cleaning and organizing, we got the bookshelves in last evening!

Still a lot left to do, but we are well on our way to being done now. And I cannot WAIT to be done! I also can’t wait for her to see it all, it’ll be wonderful!

As I mentioned yesterday, my goal for this weekend is to finish plying the first 4 oz of the cable ply yarn. I finished the singles, and they looked fantastic.

The goal in plying for the cabled yarn is that you overply it in this particular step. Thus, it is slow going, as it takes about double the time it would for a regular two ply yarn.

I am also noticing that giving it that much twist is really squishing it down, so while the yarn is feeling mighty thin at the moment, I suspect it is going to open up quite a bit during the cable ply portion of the process.

I did finish my cotton yarn, and had to read up on how to finish it. It is hanging to dry, so ideally I’ll be able to blog about that very soon!

And it seems I’ve finished spinning the cotton singles. Very pleased about that!

I feel fairly certain that these will be plied this weekend and I’ll have an actual yarn out of the deal. It may be uneven, since the slubbiness and thickness changed over the time I spent learning how to spin this.

The other thing I’ve been doing lately is gardening. My little garden is starting to produce very nicely, and I am enjoying the fruits of my labor.

I always think it’s terribly fun when I need a basket to bring in the produce.

I don’t know about you, but I am looking forward to the start of the weekend and the opportunity for more hobby time!

Yesterday’s rest day couldn’t have come at a more opportune time. An unfortunate incident in the middle of the night with a band of neighborhood roving teens, a rock, and my car threw me into a bit of a tizzy, and I really wasn’t in much shape at all to focus on crafting. In the end, I chose a nice fast bicycle ride to alleviate my high stress and anxiety.

However, today, with the car window fixed (never mind the sizable dent) and me in a calmer state of mind, spinning happened in spades.

First up, the cotton. As you can see, I am almost done! And, just at the time I am really getting the hang of it, of course. It is tempting to do more cotton, but I think I am done for now.

This means I’ll need another project for work, so I plan to take in the dervish spindle project.

I also got a good portion through the second two ounces of An Homage to Mr. Fuchsia.

I think I’ll get the chance to ply this bobbin and the first one this weekend, only to set it aside for the second 4 oz. bump. But first things first, I gotta get that cotton plied!

I’ve gotten a good amount of cotton spinning done at work this week. I managed another spindle full, wound that off, and then finished up what I brought to work, for another partially full spindle. I think the second spindle full went far better than the first, and I am starting to get the hang of how cotton wants to ACT when spun. Totally different than wool, but I am pretty sure with practice it would be a pretty comfortable fiber to spin. In fact, I was going to plow through this fiber and then be done with cotton spinning for awhile, even though I have another 8 oz of cotton “top” in a caramel color to spin. Now I am not sure, perhaps I’ll give that a try as well.

I am actually a bit farther through than this, basically another row on top. This is the first 2 oz in a total of 8 oz. It will eventually be a cabled yarn. The colorway is An Homage to Mr. Fuchsia, which was an offering in the dyeabolical pinks club awhile back. I think it is just lovely, but haven’t known what to do with my full 8 oz until now. The success with the hawser ply made me eager to do another 8 oz project.

I’ll try to post updated pictures tomorrow, as it is coming along SO nicely!

Well hello there! I am so happy to have the opportunity to show you what I finished yesterday! I took 4 oz. of Spun Right Round Rambouillet and spun it into singles. Then I added some beads, and chain plied it, adding beads into the knuckle of the chain ply. I love it, it’s really fun and fascinating yarn. It is also fun and fascinating to do different things with my handspun.

I ended up with 295 yards of beaded yarn. Beads are very randomly placed.

There are a couple tricks. First off, the single needs to be spun with enough structure to withstand a lot of pulling and the beads running over it. But, not so much twist that it kinks up a ton, or the beads won’t slide over it. Second, a few beads go a long way. I had two containers of beads, I strung one container on the first 2 oz, had leftovers, so strung those on the second 2 oz, and didn’t finish those up either. Of course, this is great, because I’ve now got beads for other projects!

Great experiment, and I suspect I am going to need to knit the yarn pretty quick.

I finished up my beaded yarn, but it isn’t dry yet. I worked on some of my cotton, but it isn’t significant. Thus, I am distracting you with another project.

I started this one the other day, just on a whim. Turns out, my new Malcom Fielding Dervish paired with Dyeabolical’s Themyscira is not only a fabulous spin, but delicious eye candy as well.

Hopefully I’ll have new, fresh, beautiful, beaded yarn to show off tomorrow.

Thus far, I am feeling like all I do is attempt in a very busy schedule to carve out a bit of time for spinning. I do hope that isn’t the theme for this year.

Due to some news among friends that would stop anyone in their tracks and reassess what they most value, I spent a bit more time than usual over the course of the weekend with friends. We ended up with the inaugural tank wars bracket yesterday, on a day that was ridiculously hot and muggy. It kind of looks like everyone had dumped water over their heads before we lit tanks.

A good time was had by all certainly.

I also spent some time with Miss Bug, after I picked her up from camp. I’d decided to mow the lawn and do yard work. As it was crazy muggy, by the time I was done, I was a hot sweaty mess. I came inside to find my own personal water station all set up.

That was good fun too!

I got the opportunity to finish 2 ounces of the beaded yarn, but I haven’t snapped a picture. Then, this morning I had to take Miss Bug to the airport for her annual trip to visit my parents. She’s looking SO grown up these days!

Tonight Mr. Ink and I are having both his kids over for dinner. Which means I TRULY could not carve out any time for spinning today. So, I brought cotton on a spindle to work, and spun at work instead. I can carve out time at work most days, even if I cannot carve it out at home.

I really hope my time becomes more my own soon. But, it just looks to be a busy summer over all.

I’ve finally had an opportunity to start the chain ply for my current project. I strung a tube of beads onto my single, and had at it.

It takes a bit of getting used to. The whole managing your chain ply can be tough enough, but when you also have to make sure your single is going through a string of beads, the complication doubles.

My beads are placed rather randomly, I am not trying to place them in any careful order. Just when I feel like I haven’t placed one in awhile, I’ll do another.

The singles need to be spun pretty well for this project, which I did. I tend to make fairly low twist singles, because I like the softness of the yarn. However, for this, they have to be strong enough to stand up to the weight of the beads, the beads dropping over the singles, and the yanking that I am doing to get the yarn to move through the beads. It seems to be going fine thus far, though I still fear the unmistakable sound of beads dropping all over the porch.

It’s awfully humid here right now, and I did get a bit of spinning done, but I am putting it down now in order to do some much needed mowing. If I get back to it, it’ll be late in the day. I am fairly happy with my current progress though.

The theme, carving out some time for spinning. It has been a long and very busy day. I haven’t had time for any type of crafting, so I had to carve out a half hour this afternoon. I just….decided to sit down, set a timer, and see where it got me.

I had one bobbin with 2 oz of spun singles:

And, I had just a tiny bit left of my second 2 oz.

Thankfully, my half hour of spinning brought me through the end of those singles, and I next get to ply.

With beads!