Bus Knitting

I just had the most surreal knitting expereince. Ready?

So I was sitting on the 80, waiting for it to get going when this woman in fabulous orange shoes gets on the bus. I am knitting this skirt I am making for Tab from stash acrylic (shh don't tell her it is a gift). The woman sits down across from me and pulls out a sock. What a second; I know that yarn! grumperina was just talking about this yarn. It is a cotton/lycra blend sock weight yarn that she got it from Greenwood Fiberworks. In fact I believe she first talked about it here.

So I asked about the yarn, and the woman asks me if I have ever heard of etsy, etc etc. It is the same yarn! That I read about on a blog... and then recognized immediately in real life. Out of my mouth come the words "do you have a blog?" It turns out that this woman is bestitched (sadly there seems to be no rss feed) whom I was able to find through grumperina's read-blog list. Bestitched encouraged me to stop by True Grounds and knit.

I am still on a knitting blog meets real-life high. I am incredibly amused and grinning. Sorry just had to share. Off to your regularly scheduled day. (PS If you want to see the yarn/sock it can be seen here.

Recycled Silk Thread

So I found this lovely cream silk extra large sweater. Well the silk was lovely anyways, 100% smooth silk. The gauge was small enough to make me stop and think about whether this was a good idea or not, but armed with my new spinning wheel I had a few ideas.

The first surprise was that the silk was actually knit with 2 strands of thread held together. Through some trial and error I discovered that skeining it with a niddy noddy and washing led to incredibly tangled skeins when I tried to later wind them into balls. I am not sure why, other than that the thread was so fine and the two strands would get wrapped funny. They also had a tendency to snap if pulled with any degree of force.

What actaually ended up working best* was to wind directly into a center pull ball from the unraveling sweater. Then I twisted 4 strands (2 from each end of the ball) in the S direction. This was rewound into a center pull ball and then plyed in the Z direction onto itself. The important part of this was to hold the tension to smooth out the "crimpiness" of the thread. Only after it had been plied, did I wind it onto a pvc niddy noddy and steam it to remove the crimp.

Below is the finished result with a strand of the starting material for reference. The final yarn is about sock weight and feels pleasant in your hand. I have just over 300 yards of the finished yarn and a bunch of the skeined thread (which I am not sure if I am brave enough to try again right now), but I am not sure what I will do with it. Originally I thought to dye the cream, but I don't want to until I pick a project.
( pictures )

*I also tried plying 8 strands in the Z direction at once, but I was unhappy with the result. Not only was it unbalanced but the strands separated very easily.