Knitting with silk

As I said before we had a workshop on knitting with silk at knitting group yesterday, which was great fun. She brought in some Mawata caps which are a big hat shape made by taking the silk cocoon after the caterpillar has emerged as a moth and then soaking it and stretching it to about 12 inches x 8 inches ish. You can grab the top of the cap and pull off a layer of silk which you can then stretch out and roll on your trouser to form a rather primitive type of thread. A way of making silk thread for those who don't spin really. I hope I have remembered that description of the process properly.

Anyway, then we knitted it up trying different needle sizes and stitch patterns and generally playing around with it, and that is the white part of the sample below (the blue is some commercial acrylic yarn I was playing with different needle sizes in stocking stitch and garter stitch).


Silk sample

I also had to buy a skein of the most beautiful hand dyed silk:


Skein of hand dyed silk

I'm afraid the picture didn't come out that well, but it is a blend of different blues and greys with silver specks. I haven't worked out what is going to be yet, possibly a scarf?