The April challenge is beaded chain ply.

I dug into my stash, most of it is from a lap waste box from World of Wool (the multi-color tops), some undyed fine merino, some purple and light pink fine merino, a little bit of glossy nylon and a sprinkle of silver Angelina.

Carded into three batts, each with three passes - from bottom to top the fiber, and what it looked like after each pass through the hand carder.

2015-04-24
2.5 of the batts are spun, now I want to finish the rest today and then on to plying starting tomorrow or the day after. I like to let my singles sit for a day or two before I attempt chain plying. With a less active twist things tend to go more smoothly.

2015-04-28
All finished, washed and dried. I haven’t measured to exactly, but it shrank a bit, so it’s probably about 250 m / 120g, spun worsted, so it should be about DK-ish.

The beads are nearly invisible in the finished yarn - I think I matched them a bit too closely: colorwise and sizewise. In the close-up (3rd picture from top) one bead is the center of attention, to give an idea about the size.

What the pictures also don’t show is the shine the yarn has. I only added a tiny bit of shiny nylon (probably less than 5 g in total, and yet it gives the whole yarn a very nice shimmer.