Silk: The shimmer of silver and gold

Silk how do I begin to sing your praises?

This installment will focus on bombyx and tussah silk varieties. There are many varieties of silk, but the most common fibers available for the handspinner are these two.

Bombyx silk is alsc called mulberry silk and is produced by the Bombyx mori moth. Michael Cook has a wonderful website that documents his raising and use of silk from varies species of moths including Bombyx mori. It can be found at Wormspit.

There are various preparations available to handspinners. Silk bricks and roving are created from combed silk fibers. Silk hankies and caps are made from cocoons that are degummed, slit open and stretched over a form or frame. Silk noil is the leftovers from the reeling process and often contains bits and pieces of junk in it. The quality varies from easily spinnable to good for blending with other fibers to not good at all. The better quality can sometimes be found in the form of silk noil roving.

Tussah silk is most often found as roving. The golden color it has is because these silkworms, Antheraea pernyi, eat oak leaves which has a higher amount of tannins in it. It can usually be found with a longer staple length and it is not as slippery as bombyx. I know many spinners sing the praises of tussah and one in particular (ahem) who considers her dangerously close to being out of tussah roving when her stash gets down to two pounds!

If you are a dyer and are wanting pastel colors, your best bet will be bombyx, but if you are wanting deep, saturated colors tussah is really the way to go. For experimenting with dyes silk caps and hankies can’t be beat and you don’t even have to spin them, you can stretch them into a thin roving and and knit, weave or crochet with it in that form.

Silk, ah what a wonderful fiber. I think its time to find that painted tussah roving and spend some quality time with my wheel.

Shetland: Versatility at work

This is what 7 pounds of Shetland wool yarn looks like.

Okay, you are asking why do you have so much Shetland spun up. Well, when you want to weave blankets you have to think big. But if you look carefully you will notice I have no contrasting colors…..sooooo….I get to spin more! All in all I should be spinning 2 more pounds, one of moorit and one of black. Some of the skeins are fawn, most are grey.

This is my in-process batts blending 1 oz emsket colored Shetland wool with 0.2 oz blue merle Shetland Sheepdog undercoat along with a pinch of opal flash. The closeup should allow you to see that this batt needs more carding.

This is a color sampler of shetland wools I got from The Bellwether a number of years ago. The colors from left to right are: . This sampler is no longer available from her, but you never know what she will be offering!

I took a double coated fleece and have combed part of it to separate out the guard hairs from the undercoat. From left to right is washed lock, undercoat left in combs, combed guard hair and undercoat carded with hand carders. The undercoat is much finer and will work lovely for lace. I just wish the picture had come out better for this one. This is a musket colored fleece.

Alpaca: A look at the spectrum

First of all, lets start with some unprocessed suri I have.

These are some tightly pencilled locks. I’ve experimented with combing them and I lose 50%-60% of the fiber. They are slightly cotted, some of it was because it arrived that way, most though is from me washing it.

Here is another lock of washed suri, this one not as tightly pencilled. Because of last years wet spring we had locally this one was slightly felted at the cut end.

I am planning on spinning both of these directly from the locks to reduce the waste.

These are locks of unwashed huacaya. These are from the legs. Notice the tippiness of the locks.

And these are from an unwashed huacaya cria fleece. Notice the crimp and the band of dirt. I highly recommend washing alpaca before spinning. Cria fleeces will have a tip on them due to the coat the cria carries in utero.

Here are two hanks of beige/white alpaca. The larger hank is from a coarser suri fleece and the smaller hank is from a finer huacaya fleece, though the pictures do not do justice to either.

And the final two pictures are from a pair of lace socks I made with hu acaya alpaca. The pattern is from “A Gathering of Lace.”

I’m afraid the detail of the pattern is blurry despite my multiple attempts to photograph it.