{"id":1643,"date":"2006-11-14T11:37:49","date_gmt":"2006-11-14T16:37:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.abbysyarns.com\/wordpress\/?p=17"},"modified":"2006-11-14T11:37:49","modified_gmt":"2006-11-14T16:37:49","slug":"november-shorter-days-sock-blends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abbysyarns.com\/webshop\/2006\/11\/14\/november-shorter-days-sock-blends\/","title":{"rendered":"November, Shorter Days, Sock Blends"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today I’m working on sock blends, in large part to work my way through the pile of bombyx silk seconds that I wound up with from recent silk dyeing sessions. Basically, any time that a silk fails my quality control for being saleable as top, I put it on the blending pile — it’s still beautiful fiber, but not quite up to my standards for sale. Usually, this will be because I break a top while moving it; sometimes it gets too tangly in a dyebath; sometimes it weighs up a little short. Every now and then, there’s one where the dye doesn’t penetrate to the depth I expect it to, or the colour is just not quite right. So anyway, blending fodder. <\/p>\n

\"MutedAs luck would have it, here as days grow shorter and bleaker, I seem to have already worked my way through the lion’s share of bright colours, and I’m left with the muted tones, and a whole lot of gray superwash merino, which is absolutely wonderful in its softness, but… you know, gray! So here I am with muted-colour silks and gray superwash that I’ve postponed far longer than I meant to. There won’t be a new round of really bright silks until I do another dye day, and that’s not going to be until my next shipment of bombyx silk arrives, sometime this week I expect. Of course, with Thanksgiving approaching, and family coming in to town, next week isn’t going to be a big work week for me. <\/p>\n

Sock blends, though, are big fun. I find them very satisfying. To be a really good sock blend, the fiber needs to be very easy to spin fine, and absolutely next-to-skin soft. It needs to have some memory, so there’s some stretch and bounce, and it needs to be a long-wearing blend. Combining superwash wool, various silks, and a little bit of nylon absolutely does produce such a blend, and then it’s up to the spinner to spin the sock yarn he or she wants. <\/p>\n

Perhaps the trickiest element with sock blends is coming up with something that it’s not just as easy for someone to buy in a millspun sock yarn. Especially in the past few years, the range of options for commercial sock yarns have really increased, and this is a constant challenge for me as a fiber producer. I tend to solve it by adding really luxurious fibers into my core recipe — a little angora, or some cashmere, maybe baby camel down — and sometimes man-made high-tech fibers that do really interesting things (like firestar nylon, which if done right can be both really startling and not too overpowering). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today I’m working on sock blends, in large part to work my way through the pile of bombyx silk seconds that I wound up with from recent silk dyeing sessions. Basically, any time that a silk fails my quality control for being saleable as top, I put it on the blending pile — it’s still […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[49,27],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Duui-qv","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbysyarns.com\/webshop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1643"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbysyarns.com\/webshop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbysyarns.com\/webshop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbysyarns.com\/webshop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbysyarns.com\/webshop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/abbysyarns.com\/webshop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1643\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbysyarns.com\/webshop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbysyarns.com\/webshop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbysyarns.com\/webshop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}