Spinning With Beads

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Last week, at the Blue Ridge Spinner's and Weaver's Guild meeting, there was a presentation by Virginia West - a fabulous and talented weaver that has a very unique way to piece hand woven squares and triangles into intriguing garments. The weave patterns and colors used in her various creations were fabulous! I was fascinated by the geometry used for creating the various garments. I even managed to create a paper model of one of the garments!

After the meeting, it was off to the spinning group where I learned how to spin with beads.

Dina had pre-strung beads onto beading thread for us and provided a "how-to" demo giving us various tips and hints on how and where to hold the threads and the process of slipping the bead onto the thread.

I then got to try it myself! It was so exciting! I plied the bead laden beading thread with two hand-spun singles of brownish wool. The singles I used were created on my drop spindle, and definitely aren't my best spinning....but they were the only singles that I had available! On the beading thread, I pushed a bead onto it at a variety of intervals in order to determine the optimum spacing for my yarn.











It took a little bit of getting used to, but I finally got into the rhythm and made a small skein of yarn with some seed beads. My mind is spinning with plans for creating some awesome yarns incorporating beads of many styles...possibly even some Swarovski crystals!