New Silks
Friday, February 17th, 2006How about some colour to go with that sunshine?
This is three skeins of 20/2 cultivated silk (bottom) and one skein of 70% silk / 30% seacell (top). SeaCell is a new fibre made from seaweed via the lyocell process. Sound familiar? It’s the same process used to make Tencel, Bamboo, Viscose Rayon, and other cellulose fibres. The manufacturers of [SeaCell](http://www.seacell.com/english/faser.html) are saying that all the “good health” benefits of seaweed can be enjoyed, that is _absorbed_, by wearing fabrics made from SeaCell. That’s some fancy transdermal vitamin delivery system.
Healthy yarn or not, the SeaCell silk is gorgeous. It takes dyes nicely, but as you can see from first photo, it gives a warmer end product. I dyed all the skeins above using the same stock solution, but the seacell skein is slightly lighter (acid dyes not reacting with the cellulose portion of the yarn?) and slightly warmer.
Last night’s guild meeting hosted [Diana Sanderson and Kate Barber](http://www.silkweavingstudio.com/) who came and brought skeins and woven samples of these new silks — beautiful drape, luminous, light fabrics. There was also look/fondle/discussion about silk/linen, silk/bamboo, silk/camel and stainless steel yarn(!?!).
While they talked about yarn, I did this:
A couple days ago, I switched from the H&S ebony circs back to my standard Addi circs and knitting is faster and easier now. This weekend, I might just find some time to catch up!
