Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Soy Silk Roving ~ Natural, White or Both!


I love soy silk. I've been working closely with with it for a little over a year now. I immediately fell in love with its soft luster, but it took a little longer for me to get used to working with this unique plant fiber. It behaves very differently during the dye process and requires more attention than some of its wooly friends.

When I first added soy silk to my inventory, I worked only with the white. Then, on a whim, I ordered some of the natural. I mean why work with a bleached product if you don't have to? I ended up shifting entirely to the natural, honey colored soy.

I felt good about this decision until I tried to dye colors like silver and light blue. The undertones of the honey just wouldn't allow me to make these colors truly cool as they are intended to be. So now I've decided to work with both. The fact is, the white just works better for certain shades. Of course this gives me even more fiber to organize in my little studio. To help me keep things straight, I am naming all of the colors that start out with white soy silk Bright; Bright Yellow, Bright Silver and so on. Not only will the colors come out brighter when they start out with the white roving, but the word Bright will help me delineate between the two rovings.

I just got in 10 lbs of soy silk, 5 lbs in the white and 5 lbs in the natural. I'll be dyeing a pound a day until both Wind Rose Etsy and Wind Rose ArtFire are well stocked. If there are any colors you would really like to see, let me know and I'll add them to my cue!

3 comments:

Eline Oftedal said...

Great post! I love knitting and will try soy silk soon. I did come across milk fiber yarn this spring and knitted a collar in it as a test. I will blog about it soon.

Great blog you have!

Kind regards,
Eline,
Norway

Anonymous said...

1914jw
Great info; never used soy silk before. I knit & crochet but right now mostly into felting & probably it doesn't felt:)
But will certainly try some for other projects sometime.

Live, Love, Laugh, Write! said...

Sounds complicated! I've never heard of soy silk before - can you tell me more about it? Or maybe do a blog post? :D