Tien Chiu

  • Home
  • About
    • Honors, Awards, and Publications
  • Online Teaching
  • Gallery
  • Essays
  • Book
  • Blog
  • Dye samples
You are here: Home / All blog posts / 45 miles of yarn
Previous post: New toys
Next post: A red-letter day for gay rights

June 26, 2013 by Tien Chiu

45 miles of yarn

I sprained my ankle on the last day of ANWG, alas – wasn’t looking where I was going, stepped on my foot the wrong way, and went down pretty hard. It stopped hurting after a few minutes, so I thought it was OK, but I took off my socks that evening to find a golf-ball-sized lump on my right ankle. Fortunately, the friend I was staying with is an ER surgeon, and she diagnosed it as “a classic ankle sprain,” iced me up, and wrapped an Ace bandage on it the following morning to get me through a day of traveling home. It’s better now, but it’s put quite a crimp in my work the last few days, as walking has been difficult. I’m just glad it wasn’t worse!

Anyway, I found more treasures in the vendor hall. I bought two 19″ reeds from the “scrap bin” at Glimakra, a bunch of videos on surface design techniques from Yarn Barn of Kansas, and 45 miles of yarn from Lunatic Fringe and John Marshall. Lest you think I was profligate, in this case, forty-five miles of yarn looks like this:

two cones of very fine silk
45 miles of yarn!

On the left is a ruby red tram silk from Lunatic Fringe, 6 strands of 20-22 denier reeled silk, which clocks in at about 30,000 yards per pound. There are 15 ounces of yarn on the cone, and a little math gives 15 miles of yarn on that one cone.

On the right is a very fine silk yarn from John Marshall. How fine? Well, here’s a photo that will give you some idea:

comparison of thin yarns
comparison of thin yarns

The red strand is the tram silk at 30,000 yards per pound, the middle strand is the black silk yarn, and the bottom strand is one of the hairs off my head! (The dime is just to give another way to judge proportion.)

Anyway, I’m not sure how fine the yarn actually is. Looking at it, I’d be shocked if it were more than half the weight of 120/2 silk, so being conservative, let’s say it’s 60,000 yards per pound. Then this cone, with 400 grams of silk, contains at least 30 miles of yarn!

So, very fine yarn indeed.

What am I planning to do with this? I want to try collapse weave, 1/3 vs. 3/1 twill pleats in a very fine silk yarn – 140/2 silk yarn, to be precise. To accomplish this, you need a weft yarn that’s much finer than the warp. But if the warp is 140/2 silk at 30,000 yards per pound, how do you find a thinner weft? Well, here it is! This will do very nicely. I’m not quite sure when I’ll get a chance to weave it up, as my ankle sprain more or less precludes weaving, but hoping to do it fairly soon.

Other than that, life has been fairly boring the last few days – mostly catching up on sleep, spending time with Mike, and staying off my feet as much as possible. I hope this ankle heals up quickly!

Share this post!

  • Tweet
  • More
  • Email
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Print

Filed Under: All blog posts, textiles, weaving Tagged With: phoenix rising, phoenix rising dress

Previous post: New toys
Next post: A red-letter day for gay rights

Comments

  1. Sandra Rude says

    June 26, 2013 at 8:36 am

    Sorry about the ankle, but you certainly brought home some treasures from ANWG. Take it easy and dream of fine silk cloth……

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Information resources

  • Dye samples
    • Procion MX fiber-reactive dye samples on cotton
    • How to "read" the dye sample sets
    • Dye sample strategy - the "Cube" method
  • How-Tos
    • Dyeing and surface design
    • Weaving
    • Designing handwoven cloth
    • Sewing

Blog posts

  • All blog posts
    • food
      • chocolate
    • musings
    • textiles
      • dyeing
      • knitting
      • sewing
      • surface design
      • weaving
    • writing

Archives

Photos from my travels

  • Dye samples
    • Procion MX fiber-reactive dye samples on cotton
    • How to "read" the dye sample sets
    • Dye sample strategy - the "Cube" method
  • Travels
    • Thailand
    • Cambodia
    • Vietnam
    • Laos
    • India
    • Ghana
    • China

Travel Blog

Entertaining miscellanies

© Copyright 2016 Tien Chiu · All Rights Reserved ·

 

Loading Comments...