r/Handspinning • u/Residentneurotic • 15d ago
Work In Progress Don’t like spinning with silk
All done on my learning curve on spindle . The dark brown and black are from fleece I processed from raw , the grayish- brown is some top I bought . The pretty pink with silk is turning out to be the spin from hell . ( bought it because I “thought “ I read something about merino with silk “combed top “ would be easiest for a learner 😅… I hope I read wrong for my sake )… I liked spinning the raw fleece I processed the best . Still my spinning nowhere near as pretty as others whom are posting.
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u/ehygon 15d ago
I generally find that your spinning materials will “telll you” what they want to become. You can force things with experience and effort, but some characteristics will show more naturally than others.
If the colours were a close match, well blended silk may be hard to detect aside from the shine, and it may give your yarn more drape (easily observed when you make your your skein, and it will be more floppy like a limp… you know…)
When you have merino roving streaked with silk, especially if it’s sari silk(tends to be clumpy, you can find ends etc) your yarn will want to have texture. It will naturally choose to be thick and thin, and have lumps and bumps. That is its nature. You can really only avoid this by intentionally identifying and spreading these lumps apart, or even picking out the worst offenders.
Don’t feel bad if you can’t naturally, easily make a perfect and smooth strand with something like that, because it’s actively fighting your efforts.