Posts tagged ‘fiber prep’

Finally the brown cotton is done. Now I need to ply it. I tried but I immediately had problems with it snarling and breaking. I’m going to let it sit on the bobbins a while and hope it’s better behaved in a few weeks. I did some experiments with the other cottons I have but I still have to decide what I want from them.

In the meantime, there’s plenty more to do. I’m working on one of the blending skeins, I’ve decided to do the two ply as one of bamboo/tencel and the other of ingeo/silk. Each pair is close in length, which makes things a lot easier. The tencel is very shiny and the bamboo is not, together they are a nice in-between. I’m blending blue ingeo with bombyx top. It comes out sky blue with little white bits from the neps in the silk. (Just like the brick, it’s not great silk. Same source, too.) I just spent about four hours blending 18g of dark blue ingeo and white silk and I still have to make the rolags. Blending anything takes a long time with hand cards, even more for very different colors. The bamboo and tencel should be easier, I’m doing that with a hackle. (Well, a wool comb actually.)

A few days ago I pulled out a bunch of odds and ends from the combing waste and today I dyed it yellow-gold. I’m going to use it to reproduce one of the millspun yarns. Leftover junk is pretty close to “Approximately 100% Wool” if you ask me. That’s what that yarn is, take all the stuff hanging around and make something from it. Now I have to try to match it.

I’ve finally gotten to writing the page about hackle blending I wanted to do. I don’t actually have a hackle, but you can do pretty much the same thing on a smaller scale with a wool comb. I did one of my blended yarns this way to get a striped top. The article shows how to make a two color striped top.

And after much yarn tossed in the trash, I’ve finally started the tussah silk for the fine skein. Dunking the fiber made a huge difference so now I’m planning how I want to dye the bombyx. I’m thinking of doing the silk swatch as an embroidered piece. I’m still toying with the idea of using it for brocade weft. The idea of pick-up pattern weaving is not a pleasant one, however.

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