May Non-Wool Club spinning hints and tips

And so to the final parcel of this round of the Non-Wool Club. The next 3 month round still has a few spaces, you can subscribe here. I still have a few new fibres to introduce to you, so this next round will hopefully be interesting for everyone, and of course the colour palettes are completely different. 
The May round features 2 different plant fibres, and a different form of silk. 

I've recommended you start off with the silk first, as it will be the most familiar to you.  Muga Silk is an Indian form of silk, produced in Assam. It has a shimmering golden colour, with slight green undertone. It very much reminds me of the colour of the 9 carat wedding band that was my Grandmas. This silk will increase with lustre with every washing, the staple length is longer than Tussah Silk, and it really has a beautiful sheen and fineness. the staple length is longer than Tussah Silk, closer to the length of Mulberry Silk. 

The next fibre we have is cotton. Cotton is a plant fibre, but very different to any we've spun so far. It's very fine, and very short stapled. It's hard to over twist cotton, and to will still feel soft even when you add a lot of twist. Cotton work best when spun as a fine single, if you want a thicker yarn you usually combine multiple strands. I can really recommend the Cotton edition of Ply magazine to learn more about this fibre. Use the fastest ratio you have, and you are looking to draft using a modified form of long draw straight from the end of the combed sliver. Keep adding twist and pulling your hands apart until the lumps even out and you can't draft any further, this is the point at which your yarn has enough twist to hold it together. You can add lots of plying twist as well, this fibre can handle it! If you own any lightweight spindles this might be the ideal fibre to spindle spin, and if you own a quill for your wheel this is the perfect fibre to spin from the point. 

Our final fibre is flax. When spun this become linen thread. We're going to treat this exactly as we did the Hemp last month, so traditionally this is spun in the opposite direction to normal with an S twist (is your wheel going anticlockwise). You will find it helpful to wet you front hand as you go along, this really does help to smooth the fibres and to hold the yarn together. We are spinning flax tow, these are shorter fibres that will naturally spin in to a more textured yarn that you would get if you were spinning from flax strick. Just as with the Hemp I recommend a gentle boil in a mild washing soda solution to soften the hand of this yarn once it is plied. 

Dolomites fibres
from left to right- Cotton (Sunrise), Muga Silk (Natural Colour), Flax (Wood or Fir).

Venice fibres
​from left to right- Cotton (Cyclamen), Muga Silk (natural colour), Flax (Theatre).