I recently bought Jacey Boggs’ book Spin Art. I’ve experimented with corespinning and tailspinning in the past, but my attempts at producing beehives have always been a hideous disaster as I was guessing how they were made.
The book arrived at about the time Shiela announced her annual spring competition, based around spinning a yarn inspired by a photo. This year’s photo was of some beautiful white and purple crocus flowers.
Here’s my entry, using a mix of the techniques in the Spin Art book:
I was really pleased with the beehives and got more daring as the yarn went on. I started with small beehives, but when they managed to make it onto the bobbin without getting caught up in the orifice or the sliding hooks on my Ladybug’s bulky flyer, I kept increasing the size. The big white ones do look alarmingly like whitchetty grubs (or alien brains, thank you SulkyCat…)!
I love the look of some art yarns, but always wonder what people actually make with them. There isn’t a huge amount of this yarn, so I am going to try using it in weaving – I’m thinking of a black bag with this yarn making a stripe across the flap?
Spinstar Creations 
How does it knit up I wonder? Big needles maybe. Would look interesting!!!
I really miss my spinning as I am living in Egypt and all my spinning equipment is in the UK! I have bought a small black sheep however to start my flock off with so hopefully I can have some wool soon. Its so hard to get wool here!!!
Love your blog!
I can’t imagine knitting with the beehives, maybe you’d have to carry them across the front of a few stitches to leave them in one piece? It would be interesting to try!
At least with just one sheep you will be able to keep a close eye on its fleece as it grows and give it a quick shampoo and conditioner treatment if it looks a bit out of shape!
That is really beautiful. I’m not really into textured yarns, but yours is so pretty I’d want to just hang it on my wall and live with it. I like your idea of weaving with it but I’m not a weaver so don’t know how that would work. Are the bumps spaced such that they would work up between your warp threads?
Fantastic job!
Thanks Kris – I am spinning some black merino to use as the warp and it will be interesting (or possibly a disaster!) to see what happens when I try to weave.
I think the beehives will be fairly randomly spaced and I might have to bring them to the front and keep them over the top of the warp threads to stop them from getting squished? As it will be only my third weaving project it will all be rather experimental anyway!!
Wow – it looks amazing!
Please show us what you’ve done with it!
Thank you – I am a bad spinner, I have a habit of spinning things and then spinning something else instead of using what I’ve spun… The Crocus Yarn in still in its skein.
That’s OK!
I spend ages choosing and buying wool for a project… but having done this I’m a bit bored and months later come across the wool and think ‘what did I buy that for’ having never started it!
🙂 At least I’m not the only one…
What a spectacular job on your yarn! Because of your fabulous result I’ve now had to investigate more about this book. I now know I must have it. Thanks so much for this post – which is totally inspirational. If my spinning turns out half as good as your pic I will be over the moon!!
Thank you!