A Gift from the East
My world-traveling niece has had some exciting adventures, and I’ve benefitted by receiving unique souvenirs. Her family has always been very supportive of my creative endeavors, so when her parents (my brother and sister-in-law) visited their daughter during her experience as a nanny in Chongqing, China, they kindly chased down some special yarns for me to use weaving. The packaging attested to their authenticity:
… so I had some detective work to do. Google translate yielded some interesting results: one word on the box translated as “weaving”; others as "cashmere" or "mink" (depending on the camera angle), and also lamb's wool or Australian wool. “Resurgence" was another suggestion, and I have not found anything to indicate what that means! I was not able to translate any part of the packaging to indicate fiber content. With such pretty colors I knew I had to put in the effort to make something special - and the family had given me boxes of 6-8 of each skein - plenty for weaving.
I started with the more wooly fibers. I wound one skein in two yard lengths on my warping wheel to calculate yardage - about 218 yds in a 50 g ball. That’s consistent with a worsted weight wool, but I did a wrap test to confirm. 16 wraps/inch should be a sett of 8. I warped with a sett of 12 for a denser fabric - way too wide. Resleying to at 15 epi gave me the balance I wanted. I had enough to make scarves for all the men in my family, with a bonus mini scarf for my not-yet-a-year-old grandson.
Next I took on the finer, silkier fibers. I had a Christmas goal in mind, so I only made one scarf, using the yellow yarn. I chose yellow because it was my sister-in-law’s mother’s favorite color and I knew the result would be a gift for either my SIL or my niece. I measured a 3 yd. warp to determine yardage. 144 ends. 432 yds/skein. I tried a sett of 24, which was fine, if a little too open. I beat the cloth to 36 ppi; if I sley the next warps with this yarn at 30 (average of 24 and 36), I should get a balanced cloth.
