Some years ago, I bought some tussah silk for the red bump it appeared to be and was mildly appalled to find bright turquoise bits inside. (There were also bright pink bits inside that I didn't expect but that will be another day's story.) Ordinarily I don't mind turquoise; in fact, I quite like it, but not when I think I'm buying a deep red shading to browns.
I spun some of the silk into a single and plied it with Malabrigo lace which I liked, but I did the three skeins of Malabrigo I had that way and I still had more than half the original silk bump left. I almost dumped it all into the guild fundraiser, but then I had another thought.
I split the silk into three categories: red shading to browns (what I originally thought I bought, for those keeping track), the Pink sections, and the turquoise bits. The turquoise sections turn out to be just longer than the staple length of the silk, so for the most part, each end is tipped in red. The turquoise is only more or less centered in the section depending on how accurate I was in the separation process (which is to say, not very).
I'm then dividing each bit into approximately five by pinching off a section at a time. If you've worked with silk top before, you will recognize that it can easily be divided longitudinally. The two bits on the left are working amounts of top; the five bits on the right are the full amount before dividing.
Each working bit is then folded in half and joined to the single in progress:
The drafting triangle pulls from both halves and merges the blue with the red to give me mostly purple in a much more muted shade. Short draw, obviously. Keeping the fibers parallel to each other until they are drafted out means that it can actually be drafted - silk doesn't like sliding if there's any twist at all.
The single still shows the red and blue but the final version is something I might wear.
You know: Eventually.
