Category: Tweed Chronicles

My summer of blending is relaxing, evokes my curiosity, and it is just the thing I need; early mornings I walk down to the tiny house studio, and start in on a new project, sampling, spinning, photographing. In the beautiful squinting short light which comes through the barely open shade, sun drenching the Ajrakh against a shadow, and illuminating the object against the colorful block print, it is quite evident that the photographing is the part of documenting that I enjoy most. My mind is in a state of buoyancy, allowing myself to feel like a rank beginner again, it is liberating. I spend the morning, then again, the afternoon, long pauses from chores and distractions of the household. Its just me and the creative muse, together, hunkered down.

I love how Eri silk cocoons are harvested after the moth emerges, is produced using a more sustainable and ethical method, also known as “peace silk”, and judging by its sudden availability for spinners, very sought-after for this reason alone. I love how utterly ancient flax is, it is perhaps my favorite textile fiber of all, and I can’t say enough about how I want to explore flax more, and how I’ve been playing around with yarn for absolutely decades, but have never spun flax, and never spun silk (well, not really) as each of the fibers alone are much more demanding. The flax short fibers blended with the Eri Silk, it is absolute perfection, the softness and binding influence of the silk, married with the rustic, short, stiff and lofty influence of the flax tow, together it is fairly easy to spin and the result after plying is exquisite. Soft and yet rustic, I love it and will have to spin a much larger project with this combination, because it is my favorite so far of my experiments.

♣ Blending Notes ♣ 

• Silk: Eri Silk roving from Living Dreams , color natural red, approx 50%
• Flax: Flax roving from Carr Park Artisans, in color cinnamon, approx 50%

Carding together one pairing after another, some brilliant, some not so great, going through my fiber stash, excited to discover. For this one I settled on undyed completely stiff, dull flax tow, with brilliantly colorful dyed saree silk. At first I thought, no way, there’s no way these two fibers will come together beautifully. Well, I surprised myself, once I was finished carding.

The saree silk threads can be found in this form which are the strands of silk that are cut from the looms used in the saree industry, but also are available as carded into roving or batts, as well as cut into fine ribbons, and are widely available to spinners and crafters these days. This is the former variety, the loom threads, and which are wadded up with some very long, some impossibly tangled, and the blend of colors are dizzying.

I cut the lengths– giving a try once again to the lesson taught in Spinning Exotic Blends from Longthread Media — and I simply picked out of the carders the larger tangled snarls. The flax well, it is a different source, still the fibers are more organized than my other flax tow, but I’m not sure if it is tow, or just flax top. At this point I will just assume it is well combed flax tow. Overseeing the marriage of these two on the carders was a sense of complete disconnect, that melted into a relaxed sense of possibility when I started to spin with a bit of difficult on my Turkish spindle, very nubby and the flax feeling like horsehair, but then I switched to the spinning wheel and it worked like a dream, smoothly blending the fibers into a more uniform tweed single. I ended up winding the little sample back on to the Turkish spindle mostly for photographic reasons, and then plied it with wheel too. I would like to experiment further with this pairing, but wet-spinning so that I can get a finer more uniform single without the stiff flax fibers flying about.

In hindsight I should have added more saree silk proportionally, for even though it dominated in color, it is such a diminutive fiber texturally next to the bristly flax tow, and the end result was stiff and not at all supple. Or maybe, like linen, the flax just needs a few washings to soften up. It wasn’t an easy match, an unlikely pairing which in the end, one is simply left to judge for themselves.

♣ Blending Notes ♣ 

• Recycled Saree Silk: Recycled Sari Silk Threads from Paradise Fibers, color mix Spectrum, approx 50%
• Flax: “flax roving” from Laughing Lamb Fibers , approx 50%

Drifting through my fiber stash, rapt with discovery of blending different fibers, like seaweed and flax, silk and nettle, exploring new combinations of fiber together, learning, proving, questioning, documenting, sensing, interpreting… improving. I mean, what else is there to do?

Pairing ancient fibers of silk and nettles: As for the silk fiber, I am now interested in a thing which is called “peace silk” which harvests the silk cocoons only after the moth has emerged, safely and happily flying off on its rightful life adventure, and therefore a thing which I will continue to spin — however, I had accumulated a bit of conventional silk roving back when I was setting up my fiber studio in 2020, stashing a crazy amount of intriguing fibers to spin, what I was thinking at that time I forget, but I am finally getting around to opening the stash with curiosity.

Giant Himalayan Stinging Nettle is similar to flax and hemp, considered a “bast” fiber, and the use of which most certainly is ancient. It is readily available in long fiber top, but what I had apparently done is purchase an amount of shredded chopped up nettle fiber, that I can liken to flax tow… or pillow stuffing. The fiber I have is unruly and I had no idea how to spin, but I figured I should find out. After a little research I discovered this is called “cottonized”, perhaps so that it blends better with other short fibers, as the premium nettles top is extremely long. I should have bought the top, but at the time, I didn’t know there was Giant Himalayan Stinging Nettle top, had only yet seen this cottonized version.

This blend is another odd couple for certain, combining a very rough and tough nettle plant fiber which is short and seemingly shredded and twiggy, with a beautiful slick long graceful green mulberry silk. I had just watched a Longthread Media instruction video Spinning Exotic Fiber Blends and so I thought I would try what the lesson suggested, cutting the longer fiber (silk) to the same length as the shorter fiber (in this case, the cottonized nettle) to bring more uniformity into different staple length, but let me say, it wasn’t until the spinning singles started to break a lot, and I decided that was probably not such a great idea. Also I tried a thing which is called “wet spinning” where I simply dip my fingers in water, which made the stiff nettle fibers relax and spin better, with far less breakage. The effect of the cottonized nettle looks silk noil, very rustic and beautiful, but is a bit scratchy, with stiff fibers sticking out, so I don’t think I will explore this cottonized nettle further. Figuring out each fiber blend’s characteristics is quite an adventure, oh, and next time I won’t cut the silk.

As I am finding myself with an apparent surplus of carded rolags to spin on my array of Turkish spindles, and so I have gotten into the habit of spinning while watching the 6 o’clock news, a thing which I am humorously referring to now, as Whorl’d News.

♣ Blending Notes ♣ 

• Silk: Mulberry silk roving from Paradise Fibers, Malabo Green, approx 50%
• Nettles: Cottonized nettle fiber I don’t have any idea where I picked it up, but it is undyed, and I used approx 50%

This summer I embrace being a fiber arts dilettante, I am allowing myself time to explore new facets I never before took the time to, finding myself returning to my hand spindles and hand carders, noticing a theme of sorts, blending exotic New World fibers with rustic Old World fibers. In this sample I’ve discovered the odd couple thrives together with slick silken white Seacell, a fiber derived from seaweed, and very rough and tough dyed flax tow which is the short and often shredded fibers left over when refining the longer sought-after flax fibers, is frankly quite an ancient fiber to spin. Let me put it this way ; the seacell is far too slick and the flax tow is far too rough for each of them to be spun well by themselves, but carded together 50/50 they bring harmony and create a surprisingly beautiful yarn, which is both silken and soft, but strong and still a little rustic. The long strong fibers of the Seacell hold the short flax pieces together, and the flax adds bulk and loft from the stiff fibers. Who would have thought? My plan for July-into-August is to delve into unlikely combinations like this, spinning on my spindles the small samples of different, as I happen to have collected a lot of heavy rustic flax tow dyed in different colors as well as silk and the man-made silk-like fibers — just look at them all available these days. In closing, this yarn spun with the seacell and flax is one I will be experimenting with.

♣ Blending Notes ♣ 

• Seacell: Seacell top roving from Walnut Farm Designs, undyed, approx 50%
• Flax: Dyed flax roving from Paradise Fibers, in color BonBon, approx 50%