(Click on photos for a larger view) Yes these ugly yellow curds really are silk! These are dyed cultivated silk noils. Noils are shreds of waste silk. Little leftover bits. They are soft and feel like lint bits.
The silk noil lightly placed on the handcarder. These are regular wool carders and will work fine, but if you have cotton carders they are preferable.
Handspun wool/silk noil blend. This would be a good novelty yarn. I'm not crazy about the colours but I think it has potential.
This handspun sample is 100% cultivated silk noil. It was slow going to spin, as the fibres are very short lumpy and irregular shaped. It was an inch worm process. Once done a lumpy novelty sample.
For this exercise, the hand carders were "lightly" loaded with variegated silk top sandwiched between domestic wool top.
