Passion

"... But to that second circle of sad hell,

Where ‘mid the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw

Of rain and hail-stones, lovers need not tell

Their sorrows. Pale were the sweet lips I saw,

Pale were the lips I kiss’d, and fair the form

I floated with, about that melancholy storm." -- John Keats

 

From the poem 'On a Dream' in which Paolo (one of the characters in the famous Dante' Aligiheri's 'Divine Comedy') reflects on his circumstance in the Second Circle of Hell, where those filled with Lust are sent. Here the souls of the sinners are blown hither and thither by violent storms, without rest, to reflect their lack of self-control in life.

Merino top and a sample of the Tussah Silk ready for spinning.

I started! Chose some suitable colours of super-soft merino tops and tussah-silk - a type of silk spun by the Tussah moth in China, the cocoons are harvested from the wild after the moths have left them. I had a few ideas in mind of what I wanted the finished yarn to look like and began making some samples...some aspects of which went more smoothly than others. 

The first sample, merino plied with silk, shown off on the
Niddy Noddy made for me by my husband.

At first I was convinced that the result was too stripey, that I would try a more blended look to the whole thing so off I went with my carding-combs to try something else...only to discover that, by the next morning, I liked my first sample much more than I had originally. I suppose you could say that it had grown on me! I went ahead with the second test, though, and ended up with a lovely marbled look that reminded me of either bacon or a nice rib-eye steak. I then was stuck for a while with wondering which was actually better, or rather which I preferred as there wasn't technically anything wrong with either of them.

Sample number two - a more marbled/blended looking thing.

Here's a glimpse of the second sample - which also had a softer, fluffier, appearance to it due to the blending and then being spun from rolags (swiss-roll or jelly-roll-like things) rather from the straight tops. The texture was something else that, in the end, had me sticking with the look of the first sample that I'd made.

I also had a couple of different kinds of lace to try adding into the mixture but I have to leave a little something as a surprise for the end! Suffice it to say, one of them worked out a lot better than the other.

Lastly, a piece of art inspired by my progress thus far - next stop, the finished skein.