This weekend I tackled a spinning project that really tested my skills. The fiber was a 70/30 blend of merino/silk in a combed top. It was a real challenge, and it made me rethink ever spinning a blend with that much silk in it. But once I got the hang of it, it spun up incredibly quickly, and turned out a beautiful result.
Because silk is slippery, it drifts apart like mad. This means that you will want to add more twist than you usually do, just to keep your fibers together. Before you launch into it, I recommend spinning a sample, then taking it off the bobbin and playing with it for a bit. Give it some good tugs and see how it holds up.
Silk can also have a flyaway problem. I started off by spinning "over the fold," as many sources advise. Spinning over the fold helps you control the drafting stage, but I found that it was creating a disorganized, jumbled, flyaway mess of a single. I eventually gave it up. Even though this technique was handy, it wasn't producing the yarn that I wanted. Why even bother spinning silk if you're not going to get the luster?
Another challenge I faced was in the fiber prep. Every so often it was like all the fibers ended at once, and the whole thing fell apart.
In the end I went with switching back and forth between a long backwards draw and a short forward draw. The long backwards draw worked most of the time, and it went quickly. But I kept a close pinch on it with my forward hand, so that when the prep started to drift apart, I could grab it before it broke. Then I proceeded from that point with a short forward draw until the fibers were back in order, and proceeded on with the backwards draw.
Image of merino/silk spnning fiber courtesy BloomKitty
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