Sunday 25 May 2008

New plant based yarns

As you might guess I always love trying out new fibres, and with Summer coming up around here I finally spun quite a bit of my plant fibre collection. The added bonus to being a little different is that these yarns are ideal to people with a wool allergy, very sensitive skin or of course vegans.

To the left we have handspun, undyed cotton, it has a gorgeous natural vanilla colour. Cotton is a lot slower to spin due to its short fibre length, but as a handspun yarn it is also a lot softer and fluffier than commercial cotton, which makes it all worthwhile!

The green yarn is hand dyed pure soy silk. The first time I spun soy silk (a good while back) it was so fuzzy and such a hassle, but this time round (on the wheel) it was a lot easier and I continued with some more soy silk.

Below is some bright pink pure soy silk with faux pearls spun into it, making it like all the other yarns presented here, a completely vegan yarn. It caters in its colour range very well to my hidden inner girly girl persona. :P
I am sure it would look very elegant no matter what kind of project it is used in, the soft drape and lots of pearl just lead to that result by default...
There is some of this pink soy silk left yet and I just bought some more faux pearls, but before I work on another skein of this one I just finished a non-vegan version of it in Merino/silk with genuine freshwater pearls - simply delicious for a natural fibre lover like me....

4 comments:

Gwen Erin said...

Those soy silk yarns are beautiful! Where do you get your fiber? They look so shiny and smoooooth. I really like them as singles too.

Snowberry and Lime said...

Thanks, I get my soy silk online in Germany, but www.winghamwoolwork.co.uk have it as well and they send internationally. :)
I am just about to get some more as I am really enjoying it at the moment! It feels more compact than silk and well, plant like. :D

AlasMyDear said...

that pink yarn with the pearls is so pretty! and soy silk...how completely exotic and earthfriendly sounding! i do wish i knew how to use beautiful yarn like that. apart from running my fingers and face through it, i mean :)

Snowberry and Lime said...

Thanks! I think that is a perfectly good use, hahaha.