I bought several skeins of hands spun tussah silk from a woman who imports them from a village in India. The yarn is a beautiful rich cream/gold colour and of varying thickness because of the hand spinning – however, it is all very fine.

I decided it was time to take it from the skein so that I could think about weaving with it. So I opened up the largest (and most disordered looking) skein of bleached yarn, spread it on a swift and sat down to unwind it. It took me hours! The yarn snags easily at it is quite rough and so sticks to itself, but mainly because the yarn breaks very easily and then I would lose the end for unwinding the skein. I eventually decided to use my ball winder but I had to spin the swift by hand as the yarn wasn’t strong enough to spin the it as I wound the ball. I eventually finished and now have 5 lovely balls of yarn that I can weave from.
The balls weigh #1 24g, #2 39g, #3 26g, #4 29g & #5 30g.

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