{"id":7334,"date":"2021-12-18T08:00:15","date_gmt":"2021-12-18T07:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/waltin.se\/josefinwaltinspinner\/?p=7334"},"modified":"2021-12-18T15:15:06","modified_gmt":"2021-12-18T14:15:06","slug":"opposites-attract","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/waltin.se\/josefinwaltinspinner\/opposites-attract\/","title":{"rendered":"Opposites attract"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It happened again. A baby idea came and made up its mind not to leave me alone until I had listened to it. The baby idea told me to combine rustic gute fleece with recycled sari silk with the motivation that opposites attract. I listened and I’m glad I did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A while ago I bought a gute fleece<\/a>. Gute sheep have a very rustic wool that often has a coarse appearance. You can read more about gute wool here<\/a>. This one was quite unusual, though, with its very soft undercoat and the outercoat playing only a minor part. Still, as with gute in general, the fleece has kemp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kemp<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Kemp is fibers that have a dominant core with air-filled cells that make the fibers brittle. They are coarse and don’t conform themself with the rest of the fibers, instead they point quirkily in all directions. The upside with kemp, though, is that they fall out of the wool eventually and leave air pockets. And in yarn, air means warmth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A lovely and in my experience quite rare gute fleece with lots of very fine undercoat, a few strands of outercoat and some kemp. The kemp keeps the staples open and light.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A fulling project<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Kemp also gives a rustic look to a fabric. I like a fulled fabric with quirky kemp in it. My original plan for this fleece was to spin a 2-ply yarn to weave and full in a fulling mill<\/a>. The combination of lots of undercoat with quite small amount of outercoat and kemp makes this a perfect candidate. The undercoat has excellent felting properties, the outercoat binds the fibers together and makes the fabric stronger and the kemp adds an interesting design element while at the same time bringing warmth to the fabric as it falls out and leaves air pockets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enter Sari silk<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

And so the baby idea came to me. What would happen if I blended the rustic gute wool with recycled sari silk? Would the very different fibers complement each other or would they just look odd? If so, would that be a bad thing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have blended recycled sari silk with wool before, in my sweater designs Margau beta<\/a> and Selma Margau<\/a> (available as a pattern in Spin-Off magazine<\/a>). The fleeces have been finer and the results scrumptious. I decided to give my baby idea the benefit of the doubt and make a test skein and fulled swatches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Teasing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So, first of all I teased the wool. I chose to tease with my combing station, where I could at the same time blend the sari silk with the wool. I charge the stationary comb with the (picked) gute staples. For the purpose of teasing I don’t care about the direction of the staples. I also add tufts of sari silk. To keep a reasonably even wool to silk ratio I charge every combload with 8 staple length tufts of sari silk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As I doff the roving off the stationary comb a lot of the sari silk and the kemp stays in the comb. I try to fiddle the silk out.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I do about four passes in the combing station to get an even roving. There is one tricky thing here, though. As I doff the wool off the combs I get the longer lengths first, then shorter and shorter. Since both the sari silk and the kemp is very short, around one inch, a lot of it stays in the stationary comb. I try to fiddle the sari silk out to the best of my ability. I will try flicking the cut ends of the gute staples before teasing next time to get more kemp out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can see how I tease wool, blend it with sari silk and card rolags in this video<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carding<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As I card luscious rolags, the sari silk blends beautifully into the gute wool, like sparkling stars on a foggy night. Unexpected but mesmerizing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n