smelly silk?

[jeanius80]

i have some of kp's wool/silk i am dyeing. i have it soaking in some hot water and vinegar, but i noticed before i put it in the h2o, that it smells gross, like fish and dog breath . it just occured to me that it must be the particular silk they use, because i have some baby silk from elann.com that had the same exact smell (its an alpaca silk blend). but my artyarns regal silk doesn't smell. different silks? just curious

[syndactylus]

I was just reading about this yesterday in the kool aid dyeing article on knitty!

noil or bourette silk yarn:
Short fibres containing crushed pupa left behind after making higher quality spun silk are made into noil yarn. The shortness of fibre length results in a lack of lustre and body. This is lower quality spun yarn using the same metric count system as the above spun silk. Noil has the strongest silk odour due to impurities in the yarn. The majority of the smell dissipates after washing, but can return again when wet.


yarnreview.com says:
Some silks exude an awful smell when you wash them, often a sign that the fibers weren't processed thoroughly.

[jeanius80]

ahhh! i was thinking something along that line. thanks for the info!

[Ingrid]

Some people have a strong aversion to the smell of silk--even when nobody else in the room smells anything. I had a blouse which I actually thought was cotton from the feel, and a co-worker said she could smell it across the room. Sure enough, it was raw silk and didn't smell like anything to me, nor to the other people I asked. She's just sensitive to it and can't even stand being in a store that has a lot of silk.

[Julie]

Same experience here -- I have some lovely wool-silk that I bought to dye and it smells positively when it's wet.

[Doodknitwit]

how does one get odors out of ribbon type yarn.. this smells musty..
phewwwwwwwwww i'd like to make something with it

Wet silk smells like rotting fish. I just soaked some wool-silk for dyeing the other day and thought I was going to hurl. Most of the smell went away during the dyeing process and a good wash with Eucalan, but I can still smell the fishiness. I think I might try soaking it in Woolite or something--anything to get rid of that smell. Once this batch of silk is gone, that's it. I'm not dyeing this stuff anymore.

[Julie]

Angelia, I felt exactly the same way...I keep fondling my remaining undyed skein of wool-silk trying to figure out what I could make that wouldn't require my dyeing it...

[jeanius80]

i think in the future i will just do a single color so i don't have to handle it as much, and that should limit the smell i have to inhale! blech i just handpainted two hanks of the KP wool/silk and it took me like 2 hours to finish, then i still had to rinse and twist. stinky stinky

Stinky stinky indeed! I can't imagine hovering over that stuff for two hours. I put mine in a dyepot, but the simmering seemed to make the stink worse--there's nothing like a foul odor made worse by heat.

I'm beginning to think the remaining hanks I have may never get dyed