Milk Fibre and Carloway hand-spuns

Yesterday evening I couldn't wait to get started on the milk protein fibre I had ordered from chimera.etsy.com. It arrived very quickly and there was a lovely surprise in the bag - a sample of bamboo fibre too! So two new fibres at once, I feel very spoilt!

The milk protein was wonderful to spin, so very smooth and slippy. If you take your eye off it for a moment it runs away from you! However, it soon spun up and is now hanked and sitting in a basket so Joan at Calana Crafts can dye it tomorrow. I want to see how it takes a dye.

Then I finished off my royal blue Carloway hank. It twisted well with a fine Shantung silk of a similar colour and knits up in a pleasant knobbly sort of way at 4sts and 6 rows to the inch on 4.4mm needles.

Having got the camera handy, I have also taken a photo of my candyfloss Carloway yarn which has been twisted with a fine purple lurex thread. It's slightly thicker than the blue, but not substantially. They co-ordinate very well together.

By the way - Joan from Calana Crafts was telling me that someone in one of her groups was interested in Qiviut fibre. I bought about a pound in weight from the Large Animal Research Station at University of Alaska, Fairbanks. It was very expensive (over £100 including carriage) and is as it comes from the musk-ox needing de-hairing by hand, but all the proceeds from sales of fibre through them goes directly back into the study and conservation of the animals. Just Google Qiviut and you should get to them. It is just fabulous to spin with and is such a fine warm fibre that it is ideal for people who are a)allergic to wool and b) suffer from the cold like the elderly or the very young.