- I wasn’t particularly looking for a new knitting project when I wandered into the Diva Yarn store in Port Townsend, but when I saw the first display of recycled silk yarnfrom Nepal, I gasped.
Recycled silk, woven on a triangular loom They had three more bins of it throughout the shop, priced to indulge. The yarn is spun from the tails (warp?) from sari looms, as well as shredded old saris, in shades of mostly-red that range from very bright to subdued. There is no dyelot, per se, as each skein is colored according to what the spinner finds in her basket. There is a strong parallel to the rugs produced by women at the Endless Possibilities workshop in Manteo, NC. I bought ten skeins, enough for a shawl, and then over lunch realized ten was not going to be enough, and went back for more. This time, I bought enough more for a sweater AND a shawl and had most of my yarn shipped home. I started knitting on the ferry back to our apartment and had all four skeins knitted up before we left for home. Now I’m waiting on UPS to bring me the rest.
- After my visit to the Endless Possibilities gallery, I started collecting fabric from the recycle shed at the dump, and maybe I’ll play with it. I don’t want to go to a real loom, but I’ve seen pictures of knitted items made of sliced-tshirts, and I have an idea about crocheting forms from fabric. I don’t quite know what will happen yet. Although I have been knitting (again) after a hiatus, I haven’t done very much with textiles-as-art. Textiles are my first art form–I can’t remember learning to knit and crochet. Stay tuned.
- We encountered several vendors of alpaca fiber later on the trip, which provided another opportunity to come to terms with what is my art form and what isn’t. Alpaca is fabulous fiber. It’s expensive enough locally that I don’t even consider buying it, and I think the prices from the farmers in the PNW were pretty good. However, the colors are those more traditionally associated with the PNW–all the muted heathers–than with India, as is my silk. Even the hand-painted skeins were subtle, rather than jaw-dropping bright. I was able to resist (having already violated my rule about not buying for the next knitting project until the current project is finished). Tuesday, my mother called and told me she was sending me some alpaca fiber she’d bought, intending to make shawls, but it’s too fine for her hands in their current arthritic condition. Interesting circle. My friend with the llama insists that an alpaca (herd? flock?) would be a good addition to my menagerie; John remains adamant. If only they preferred to eat grass, rather than shrubbery…
- I am also considering knitting upholstery with the Nepalese silk yarn, available on eBay for an even more reasonable price than I paid in Port Townsend. I’d need to use a smaller gauge to get a sufficiently dense fabric… might be that I could only cover the structural parts of the couch in knit; use some other fabric for the seat cushions… If I do this, I really will have to repaint the living room…
- (I’ve tried triangle-loom weaving with this yarn and it is very difficult. Protein-based fibers will felt, and the dangly bits of the silk grab and bite at each other. The small sample I created wasn’t much fun to make. Sure is pretty, though.)
