Once upon a time I had a pile of pretty silk hankies that I was knitting unspun into a scarf.
It was ugly. Really ugly. Plus I hated knitting the unspun silk. It would catch on everything. I tried to frog it but the silk wouldn't frog. It just kept breaking.
Then I thought I would take the unspun silk and spin it. My first try was promising. Spun on left. Unspun on right.
So I rigged up a lazy kate type contraption with a chair that let me draft the silk off the paper tube and use my Spindolyn to spin it. So far so good. I worked (wasted) a whole morning on this.
Then I went to unwind the spun silk onto another paper bobbin. It wouldn't come off the shaft of the Spindolyn. It stuck to itself and broke and finally it ended up a giant wad of tangled crap. I was major pissed off.
I still have a beautiful pile of hankies left but I am so angry at them that they are going into time out. Silk is a bitch.
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I love the colours in your hankies.
ReplyDeleteI have to get mine. I'm not having too many problems just drafting and knitting, but it did take a little practice (and several wasted hankies). I find the drafting is hard on my hands though, so I only do a few at a time, then it gets set down. And yep - that silk is sticky as hell - like spiderwebs!
I don't enjoy spinning silk hankies, but I have made some really lovely softly spun singles from them. I prefer using a spindle since I can control all the stop-and-go-and-drafting more easily.
ReplyDeleteDrafting them makes my hands ache, too. So I have a few left that I keep looking at, but can't seem to bring myself to spin.