Some months back I had an E-mail message from a knitter who had just received the newest issue of her favorite knitting magazine. The issue contained a pattern that she just loved and wanted to knit so she tried to order the yarn specified in the pattern and found that it was no longer available as it had been discontinued. She was asking what yarns might be available that could be substituted for the called for flax and silk blend yarn. This is not a problem for those of us who spin – we can just raid our stashes or order the necessary fibers and blend them up on our cards or with our combs, spin up those fibers into yarn that matches the pattern specifications, and then dye it any color we wish.

What caught my eye was the blend of the sought after yarn. Flax and silk? This was not a fiber blend that I would have thought of creating, yet would be interesting to try it and see how the fibers blended together and what the yarn would be like. I decided to experiment with some different blends of silk and flax and see what the results were like.

The fibers I used were some bleached tow flax top with a staple length of between 3 and 11 inches and some silk fibers that had been precut to a 3 inch staple length specifically for blending.

I decided to sample three different blends:
75% flax, 25% silk
50% flax, 50% silk
25% flax, 75% silk.
Percentages were figured by weight of fibers. Since silk is so light weight, it took what appeared to be a huge volume of silk to create these blends, yet when weighed out the percentages were correct.

Because of the great difference in the length of the bulk of the flax fibers and the silk, I did all of the carding on hand cards. I carded the flax first, then the silk and made little fiber “sandwiches” which were recarded several times. Since the volume of silk to the flax was so high, I had several batts which I then separated into strips, recarding strips from each batt into a new batt until I was satisfied that the fibers were evenly blended.

The samples were all spun from rolags using supported point of contact long draw and were 2 plied and finished by washing in hot water with Dawn Dishwashing Detergent, rinsed in cold water then rolled in a towel to remove excess moister and whacked on a countertop and finally hung to dry. They were a bit stiff when dry so I gave them another whacking which softened them nicely.

All three of the skeins came out with a nice degree of luster. The 75% flax skein has a crisp handle but the silk has softened it considerably and added drape. The 50/50 blend still has a bit of crispness to it but is even softer though drape seems to be about the same as in the 75/25 blend. The 25% linen blend is the softest and has the best drape. This blend also gave a lot more yardage that either of the other two blends.