Knitting With Raw Silk Yarn

Knitting With Raw Silk Yarn

Raw Silk Yarn adds luxury and strength to any knitting project, lending sheen and strength. Although not ideal for items like dishcloths, children's clothes or hand towels that will need frequent laundering or use, such as dish towels or dish cloths; it is perfect for creating soft accessories like shawls, sweaters, cardigans and other soft accessories such as scarves.

Silk fibers are among the finest on earth; smooth, strong and lustrous - yet their production requires intensive labor to harvest from cocoons. As a result, most silk yarns today are blended with other natural or manmade fibers to reduce costs while still offering sheen and lustre at more reasonable price points.

Reeled silk comes in various forms: organzine is tightly twisted for warp use; tram has only slight twisting for weft use; spun silk, which consists of long single filaments plyed together, is usually available to handweavers. Spun silk can be quite slippery; to prevent slipperiness a swift clamped sideways onto which the skein of spun silk should be wound is best practice.

Silk yarn's individual fibres may be very thin, yet still possess remarkable tensile strength due to the hydrogen bonds interceding between each individual strand - this strength even surpasses a steel wire of equal diameter! However, due to the numerous fibres interlocking with one another it can easily pill when exposed to rough surfaces like tables or jewellery clasps - making pilling inevitable and pilling even more likely than steel wire cables of similar diameter! However due to pilling it also easily catches onto surfaces such as tables or jewellery clasps making pilling inevitable and easily caught between fibers can easily catch and unravelling itself while being vulnerable.

Due to this delicate material's delicate fibers and slippery nature, any pure silk handknit must be handled carefully when knitting with it. Robin Russo recommends using smaller needles than wool for consistent gauge due to silk's slipperiness; she also advises knitting without tension in your hands as tension will cause it to pull more than necessary on its fabric fibers.

Once a project is complete, it should be carefully washed by hand in a basin of lukewarm water with nonalkaline detergent added. Swirl the article around in the water until all soap residue has been rinsed away before gently rolling in a towel to cool flat before placing into the dryer. Silk fabric's delicate nature doesn't allow it to be put through this step effectively.


Silk crinkle chiffon