Monday, December 04, 2006

More about spinning

Hello all! I just thought I'd put in a quick post while I'm taking a small break from studying for my CS final. Which is tomorrow. At 8:30 in the frickin morning.
soy silk and merino 70-30 blendAnyways, hi. I've been spinning a lot, at least in between studying and definitely before finals week started. I spun up the soy silk, like I said, and I got approximately 55 yds. I don't have a scale (another thing to put on my Christmas list, I really need to know how many grams and oz are in each skein), so I can't tell you how much fiber created that.

I can tell you that although the end product is very nice and shimmery, I don't like working with 100% soy silk. It's like a cobweb, and I mean that literally. It doesn't like to stay in its nice roving form, and prefers to float everywhere, and cling to everything. Yet each individual staple is incredibly strong. I was using my spindle (obviously), but that spindle is about 1.2 - 1.4 oz (again, I need a scale) but I could easily spin a very very light laceweight single on it, without having to worry about it breaking. However, it all comes back to it's a cobweb. Predrafting is a necessity for this fiber; don't work with much more than how wide you want your finished yarn to be. But the fact that soy silk eats the twist, and condenses as soon as it encounters twist, you want to predraft chunks a little wider than what you would expect your finished yarn to be in another fiber like merino in order to get the same result in soy silk.

I also spun up the really small sample of Merino-Silk (70-30) I had, which was only about a ft long. I made... geez, I can't remember now. I think it was about 13 - 15 yards of it. I really liked it, especially its luster, but I'm not sure if it's because it's a 70-30 blend or if it was because it was merino, or if it was just the quality of merino that was lacking, but it was still a little itchy to me, something I had not expected. After all, it was part silk. I'm willing to bet though, that if I blended silk and BFL (Blue Faced Leicester) or silk and superwash wool (as soon as I get hand combs) that it would not bother my skin at all.
Anyways, I've taken a long enough break. Got to get back to studying!

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