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December 8, 2009

Fun with fibre

I have been having a great time getting organised to start my next big project. I received my mulberry silk and angelina fibre in the mail and have finished spinning up the last lot of merino that I talked about in 'spinning around'. I'm SOOO excited about the silk that I got...its been transformed since its arrival and will be hitting the bobbins some time tonight. But more on that later...

I decided to ply my super fine 'vintage' merino with some commercial 2ply kid mohair blend that I had in my stash. I ended up with just over 900metres of incredibly soft and fine 3ply yarn that will make a really lovely (albiet; huge) shawl one day. I havent decided which pattern I will knit it into yet, so it's going to spend some time marinating in my stash till I do.


Hand dyed merino top - 'vintage'
from EGMTK



Vintage singles



Plied with kid mohair blend


As I mentioned in my last post, I have
BIG plans for the silk that I bought. So far I have dyed it a lovely variegated turquoise green/sea blue/white colour to match the 'under the sea' merino that I purchased a couple of weeks back. I have also blended the silk with half of the under the sea; giving me a total of 200g of unblended under the sea merino and 200g of under the sea merino/silk/angelina blended fibre. I will be spinning the two seperately so should end up with singles in straight merino and singles in the silk/merino blend which I then intend to ply together giving me a fine yarn that is 25% silk/73% merino and 2% angelina. I'm very excited to be trying this as I have a gorgeous (enormous, circular and intricate) shawl pattern already purchased and downloaded to knit it into. I hope to get at least 2000 metres of yarn out of my fibre. That should keep me busy for quite some time huh?


200g Merino top - 'under the sea'
from EGMTK



100g Undyed Mulberry silk top
from EGMTK



Silk dyeing in oven



Dried silk



Silk/Merino/Angelina blend

2 comments:

  1. oooh what a great colour! what did you use to dye it?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks so much :o) I used food colouring believe it or not.

    ReplyDelete