Stressful Therapy...

Spinning is supposed to be relaxing. And plying on the wheel is, most of the time, the spinnerly equivelant of taking a Xanax. For all intents and purposes, it is. Except when you purposely make it not so. Let me explain.

A few weeks ago, my fave group in Ravelry, Sheep Shed Fiber Lovers, did a fiber swap. I sent out some lovelies to my swap partner, and in return, from another groupie, I got this bunch of lovelies:
In this package was 4 oz of hand dyed Sheep Shed fiber, four packs of alpaca fiber (totally yum!), goat's milk lotion (which is about gone, LOVE this stuff!), handmade soap, and four vials of beads. We are supposed to spin up the fiber using everything in the box. Except, of course, for the soap and lotion. But, it's on my hands before I spin, so I guess that still counts.

I have yet to learn how to use loose fiber like the alpaca I got, so I'm saving it for another project. And the beads, well, I made a concerted effort to use the beads. I really did. You see, beads and me have a strong relationship. I do a ton of beading...I've beaded the most intricate stuff imaginable, within reason. I crochet with tiny size 11o beads. This is the stuff I do with beads much smaller than the ones I got here:

Okay, so some intense stuff, right? Hell yeah, it is. To do this kind of jewelry, you have to string the beads in a very exact pattern; an exact sequence. It's not always easy. So, when I thought about plying my yarn, and adding beads in, I thought, "no problem! This'll be a cinch!!" String the beads onto the ply, pull one up as I am plying, boom, boom, boom, Right?

WRONG.

I strung the beads onto my second ply. Started spinning...kind of all excited. Tangled MESS ensued. I ended up with this:

There's my cell phone, from calling my mother and telling her my woes. There's the wrapper of the rice krispy treat that was intended to soothe my soul. And my ball winder that wound up the first ply of the yarn-to-be. And if you look closely, you will see a strand of beads...that was cut out of the second ply. Yes, eliminated. They are still laying there. And there they will stay. I was sad. The yarn is pretty...just no beads on the white ply:

So. I will add those beads into this project somehow. They might end up being...well....I'm not going to give it away. It's all spun up now, just have to set the twist, count the yardage, and them come up with something original to make out of it. But using beads is just something that doesn't go with spinning for me...not yet. They will go with the knitting. That's about as far as I can go, without getting out my beading needles and doing something really elaborate!