Fine silk spinning

In 2019 I started spinning some ‘quite’ fine yarns for natural dyeing. For this I aimed to spin skeins of about 5g. My first spun skein of silk was  NM 2/49 and I have recently spun another skein of the same silk and was quite pleased that it came out as NM 2/53 so quite consistent. 

I used my Ashford Electric espinner with the custom bobbins which I used with the Ashford Joy wheel for the first skein. (See blog of 1June 20). This is the first time I have compared the product of two spinning mechanisms on the same fibre source  like this. I have also thought that more or less any yarn can be spun on any wheel and, for me,  this reinforces it. 

The skein with 2ply silk yarn, from the espinner.

The ‘spare’  singles

I decided to measure the diameter of the yarn with my digital microscope 

This sample on the card ready for the microscope

The yarn under the microscope with measurements added. 

I was pleased to see this coming out at a wpi of 149. (I used the mean of the four diameter measurements for this calculation.)

I love the skeins in their natural colour, however the point of spinning them was to have some fine silk yarn for natural dyeing! If you follow this blog you will know how ‘unfortunate’ I was when I bought what I thought was a merino and silk blended  yarn! (The blog mentioned above gives more details). We currently have stormy windy weather here, even though it is May, and I like to do my natural dyeing outside.  When we get some more summery weather  it  will be back to the dyepot. Tough decisions to be made about which of my many recipes to use for this much loved  yarn.