Silk & Alpaca

Recently my cousin gave me this lovely bundle of silk sari ribbons. A couple of weeks ago I spun up an art batt that had some shredded silk in it, and I greatly enjoyed spinning the parts with thread in it. So I thought I would shred ribbon myself and card it with some of the alpaca we have.

Here is my pile of shredded ribbon. This afternoon my friend and I shredded up more and had the pile grow to twice the size pictured. It was very generous of my friend to employ herself shredding ribbon for me. We felt terribly destructive taking lovely lengths of ribbon, pulling them to bits and then ending up with a pile of multi-coloured threads. This silk ribbon is from saris, and were all frayed to begin with however, and by repurposing these they were going for a good cause.

This week I was away camping so I had to bring along all the materials for this project. I thought it would be fun to try something new whilst on vacation. Today was a rainy,dreary day so we were inside most of the time and that is when we shredded and carded for my silk & alpaca yarn.

Here is what I've spun so far. I am not yet finished carding up all 4 ounces of alpaca and silk, but I needed to take a break from the hand cards. Plus I was eager to see how it look spun up. I am very pleased with the results, it is just what I had in mind and I can not wait to see it plied and with the twist set. I am going to do a two ply because I figure that doing so will help anchor down any stray threads that might not be thoroughly spun in.
I'm still debating on whether or not to design a pattern with this yarn, or just find one and knit it up. I guess we'll see what the yarn wants to be when it is finished!

Cheerio my friends, and God bless! Have a lovely day!