Chocolate Malt - Merino, Alpaca & Mulberry Silk Blend Top

These two started as candidate blends for our Retro Ice Cream Shop fiber club. We asked for a chocolate malt and got back two versions that landed within a shade of each other, so the club went a different direction and these stayed on the shelf. There's a small run of each.

Both are the same recipe. 76% extra fine merino spread across four shades, 12% mulberry silk, and 12% superfine alpaca, blended together into top. Every wool shade in it sits next to the others, cream through brown through soft grey, so it isn't a variegated fiber pretending to be a solid. It spins to a consistent brown with the tone moving through it, which is the hard thing to get out of dyed fiber.

Which one to pick

The silk is what separates them. It's far enough from the wool in value to read on its own, and the wool shades aren't. White Silk uses natural white mulberry silk, so you get bright streaks catching the light down the length. Sand Silk uses a sand shade that sits close to the wool, so it reads tone on tone and stays quiet. The blend underneath is identical, so this is only a question of how much you want the silk to show.

How it spins

Fine merino drafts slowly, and that's the thing to plan around. Twist gets ahead of your hands before you expect it and the singles come out wiry. Easing off the treadle or drafting a little quicker sorts it out, and which one depends on your wheel's ratios.

To know when the twist is right, let a length hang slack. If you're going to ply, the singles should still want to curl back on themselves, because plying takes some of that twist out again. If the singles are the finished yarn, spin them to hang close to straight.

Draft style decides how the yarn behaves, far more than the recipe does. Worsted from the end goes dense and smooth with more drape. From the fold goes lofty and springy, and it's the easier of the two on fiber this fine. The merino keeps its crimp either way, so ribbing snaps back.

If you're new to the wheel, this isn't the one to start on. A coarser, springier wool is more forgiving in the drafting zone and costs less to learn on. Come back to this once a thin single has stopped fighting you.

The details

• 76% extra fine merino, 12% mulberry silk, 12% superfine alpaca
• Blended top
• Sold by the ounce in one continuous length