Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Subzero Fiber (part II)

Short one, today.

I knit up most of my natural fiber swatches and brought them in for some initial testing. I plunged swatch #1 into liquid nitrogen and... well...

Nothing turned to glass.
Nothing. I sat there with it completely submerged for minutes (ie until the metal tools were getting uncomfortable to hold) and nothing happened.

I haven't tried the synthetic fibers yet, but other than a little issue with absorption, both protein based and cellulose based fibers were unbreakable when I yanked on them with two hemostats like it was going out of style. I think the alpaca might be less fragile at -196 C than at room temperature... I couldn't make a single swatch even rip and all of them were downright flexible.

 I'll work up the synthetic fibers tonight, but they take some finesse and needles not made of bamboo.

The current fiber list is:
98% cotton, 2% elastic
70% superwash, 30% nylon
100% alpaca
100% tencel
100% sugarcane
55% wool, 45% silk
25% buffalo, 75% tencel (purchased after round 1, given the observations made about cellulose and natural fiber)
50% milk protein 50% soy protein
100% acrylic
100% silicon (Rescue tape modified into yarn using the plarn process. This is a nightmare.)
100% PTFE (teflon tape spun into a strand)

I need to modify my thermocouple procedure a touch to make sure the yarn is in contact with the junction (the part that actually reads the temperature), but other than that today was remarkably enlightening.



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