I spun up some pure alpaca to ply with the balls of alpaca and sari silk, to see what that did to the color density. Rather than make three small balls and try to match the yardage, I spun up 9 rolags into a single ball, then plied the colored singles with the uncolored into one cob.

Diluting the color with the uncolored ply had the most impact on the single with the most color. I like the yarn with just touches of color, and reducing the percentage of color makes it even better for me.

I had a bit more of the uncolored than the colored, which was perfect. Rather than scrap the extra bit of white, I doubled it up and plied to the end. No waste at all, which is definitely a plus for making a two ply.

I wound up the plied yarn on my PVC niddy noddy and gave it a rinse to set the twist. I ended up with about 117 yards of two ply alpaca and mixed fiber sari waste yarn. It took five walks to spin and ply this yarn. (It is a good thing that it is the spinning and the process that makes me happy.)

I dropped my spindle and it broke again, in the middle of a walk. Luckily it cracked and didn’t completely snap off, so I was able to wrap the yarn around the neck and finish spinning the roving I had in my bag. After I came home and removed the ball of spun yarn, I put some wood glue in the crack and clamped it up tight.

This ball of yarn is another go with adding bits of color to alpaca fleece. When I was carding the fibers for the rolags, I found something suspicious. In the bag of “100% silk” sari thread waste were strands of metallic gold. Hm. Probably not silk. So I did a burn test on four different colors. I was surprised that two of the colors (pink and neon green) were actually silk despite the vast difference in texture. When I burned them I got the characteristic balls of ash that crushed easily. (My sense of smell is terrible, so I need to rely on other physical signs.) The metallic gold, not shockingly, just melted in the candle flame. Then I tested some black fibers that burned even when removed from the flame (silk does not) and produced fine gray ash with no ball. This may be rayon (here is a good article on the burn test). If you do a burn test yourself, use tweezers to hold the twisted fibers to the flame. The black fibers flared and burned faster than I could say “ouch”. (I did use tweezers, but the ferocity of the burn was surprising.) So I will have to say the yarn I am making uses mixed fiber waste.

I love my concrete countertops.

I tried adding some more colored sari silk waste to my cream alpaca fleece and went too far. Instead of touches of brilliant color I have a muddled pastel mess. Hm.

I did learn that trimming the silk threads down to about the same length as the alpaca fiber helps with carding, but gives more loose ends when spinning. Time to try again, maybe with trimmed silk, but less volume.

I’ve started a new spinning project. I read about using waste sari silk threads in spinning and had to order some.

To get the color to pop, I chose the lightest color fleece I have, which is a light cream from an alpaca named Sugar Plum. I carded a small amount of the sari silk with the alpaca before rolling up the rolag.

I’m spinning this up on my favorite drop spindle as I walk the neighborhood. The bits of color are nice, but I think I need a bit more.

Oh how joyous it was to get back to walking and spinning!