…and Funky Yarns

And on the second day of the Fiber Treasures retreat, we spun funky art yarns. First up was add-ins, which I had done before, but it’s always fun to try it with new things. And boy, were there things! Teri and Christine treated us to a whole bar of fibers, beads, pompoms, feathers, flowers, sparkles, and fabrics. Based on my grab bag of fibers, though, I thought the flowers were a perfect fit.

The first step is to thread the add-ins on to some small length of fiber or commercial yarn. For the flowers, I ended up core-spinning around the tops and bottom of their threaded yarn to lock them in place. I also used the opportunity to play with a consistently thick-and-thin single. Mine never got as cool and extreme as Christine’s, but I can work up to it!

Marci went way more wild than I did, and I think it paid off! Look at how fun her yarn turned out.

Our next technique was spinning with locks, which was the main event for me! I was trying to figure out what to do with those lovely locks Marci got me for Christmas. So we played with lock-spinning a whole yarn, lock-spinning in a traditional yarn to add texture, and tail-spinning.

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The lock-spinning required fluffing out the locks with your hand or a comb, and it did make a cool yarn.

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The tail-spinning, though, was actual magic. You split the tops of a decent-looking locks in two pieces, so it looks like a Y, and you spin the tops together leaving the tails to hang out, and it looks awesome. It was my favorite technique of the whole weekend! Look at how awesome Christine’s turned out!

These are my finished skeins from the day. I hope Teri and Christine decide to host another event soon! This one was just too much fun.