Infinite Filament

I bought this reel of silk filament at a clearance sale, I don't know how many years ago: I've used it a lot. Mainly to ply with. This morning I used it to ply the last of my angora-merino drop-spindle yarn. As if it wasn't delicious enough already! The strange thing is the reel never seems to get any smaller. Of course I didn't weigh it when I first brought it home. It was part of a boxload of stuff and I'm sure I only paid a couple of dollars for it. It isn't really infinite and maybe if I live long enough to spin up all the fibre I have at my house I'll eventually get to the end of it. But meanwhile, there it is in its fine magenta lustre waiting to be added to one more skein

Here's What I Got

Here's a skein from yesterday morning's experiment: I'm happy with the texture and colour combination. I'd like to try with a bit more of the very pale green colour--the one you can hardly see. The major difficulty with what I produced is that it's very fragile. I don't think I'd dare knit with it, but I'd like to try it in some weaving. The reason it's so fragile is that the commercial yarn I used to ply it is extremely fine, and being wool, it's not very strong. Also the process of plying to get the bubbly texture that I wanted took most of the twist out of the marle spun single. So I'm relying on the fine wool to provide the strength and it's not really up to it. If I'd used silk to ply with--I did consider it--I would have more strength for the same thickness of yarn. Or I could have doubled the fine wool yarn. That's ok by me. It was an experiment and that's what experiments are for. I have another 50 g of this colour combination in tops that I can play with.