Red Silk Saga Finale

You remember the Red Silk Saga. In a way it was its own success. The silk got untangled, but it still wasn't plied.

The merino/mohair singles have been sitting on their bobbins for months.  Since March, to be exact.  When it was cold and bare outside.  

I started this project with a vision in mind: a soft 3 ply yarn with red silk highlights. I was so proud of my first silk thread.. It was a little more uneven than I'd hoped for, but I thought the unevenness would work out ok, since the fine thread was meant as an accent.

I delayed. Well, there was a good reason for that, and a not-so-good reason.  One, I was nervous, because I started this whole project with a vision in mind of what I hoped it would look like when I finished. And I wasn't at all sure it was going to.And then there was the episode with the life-threatening hives, but we won't go into that.

Summer came. There those bobbins were, staring me in the face, and the weather was, shall we say, inclement.  Inclement by Vermont standards, which means both hot and wet, with frequent thunderstorms.  No excuses.  

I tried a few different ways of working the silk into the three merino/mohair singles, but none of them looked right.  I didn't want a barber pole look.  

Finally I held the silk and one of the merino singles together and ran them through the wheel quickly in the same direction they were spun ("S" twist).  

It added some extra grist, but not so much they were kinked up.  

Then I plied all three together in a Z twist, and hoped it would come out something like what I envisioned.  

I was relieved to see that though there was still a little bit of barber pole look, it was because the yarn lay parallel on the bobbin. In the yarn, the red was nicely broken up, and formed something like the accents I'd been aiming for. 

Whenever I spin, I have a vision in my head of what the yarn might be turned into.  Throughout the process of spinning the merino/mohair singles, I kept seeing a 1930s beret style hat, with a narrow band.  I think this yarn would look very nice crocheted up into a hat like that.  Or a shawl.

It is lusciously soft, and with nearly 8 ounces of yarn, it could even be made into a dressy top, or a cardigan for a child.Makes me wish I could still knit and crochet.

After the bobbin with the red silk ran out, the other two bobbins still had singles of merino/mohair on them, so I plied a small bonus skein of plain 2 ply.