Yes, fake cashmere. I couldn’t resist buying some of this stuff. It is synthetic, made from rayon I believe, and is advertised as being as soft as cashmere. Machine washable and long fiber length is a bonus. Humm. Sounds fun, right?
Dyeing
Dyeing the fiber was a lot of fun. It soaked up the dyes beautifully. I used Lanaset acid dyes in pink, mauve, fushia and tan. I dyed the fiber in the crock pot, just randomly pouring color over the layers of coiled up fiber. The dye bonded just like an animal fiber. I didn’t have any color wash out in the final rinse. So that was a good thing.
But spinning it was a bit tricky.
Spinning
The fiber is so fine and has such a long staple length, that even just pulling the fiber apart was a challenge. It is STRONG. My first attempt was to spin a single-ply, bulky yarn. No, no, no. I got extremely frustrated. Drafting was a nightmare because if the teeny-tiniest bit of twist got anywhere near the fiber supply, the whole thing would harden up and not budge. After fighting with the roving for a half hour or so, I gave up. – Not worth my time.
So instead, I opted to treat the fake cashmere just like silk. – I split it down to tiny little strips about the width of my pinky, and I spun long woolen-ish style, never allowing the twist to ever come in between my front hand and the back hand holding the fiber. Now we are spinning! The biggest challenge was to keep the twist away from the drafting triangle. I plied it and ended up with some really nice worsted weight yarn.
Now is it as soft as cashmere?
IMO, not really.
The Yarn
In my opinion, it is identical to silk. It feels like silk, it spins like silk, it has the same strength as silk and it knits like silk. I really think they should call it fake silk. 
And if anyone thinks I’m out of my mind to say this, please! let me know. I’d love to hear what other folks think of this stuff.
I do love the slight sheen, the softness and the “crisp” in the final yarn. However there is very little stretch (what is that called – elasticity?) so you wouldn’t want to make anything that is going to require a lot of stretch and memory.
Oh wait – but I am one for doing exactly what you shouldn’t do…so I decided to knit a pair of wrist warmers.
The Knitting
I looked through my handy-dandy book, The New Knitting Stitch Library, and found a simple cable-looking pattern that isn’t really a cable. (The cross-over is actually formed by knitting behind 3 stitches.) Then I knit up a swatch on size 7 needles, calculated my stitches per inch, measured my wittle wrists and found me a cast-on number. Last some fiddling here and there and figured where to place my cable.
The cable was a pain in the butt to knit with the fake cashmere. Remember my saying that there was little to no elasticity and memory? Well try knitting in the back loop of a stitch that is 4 stitches over on your needles. You have to stretch across without dropping all the stitches that are being skipped. I found it very difficult. I would imagine had I been working with a nice stretchy wool yarn, it wouldn’t have been such an ordeal.
To add some frills and thrills, I added a ruffle border that I found in the book, Knitting Over The Edge. Again, this was not fun at all to knit with a non-stretchy yarn since you are knitting like 3-4 times in the same stitch over and over again. But the ruffles are so cool. I love them.
End Result
I do like the faux cashmere a lot. It created a strong, super-soft yarn that I can dye with my regular acid dyes, and can throw in the washing machine when I please. However, I did learn to treat it like silk in both spinning and knitting. Plan projects accordingly. My wrist warmers are warm, snuggly and soft. Now I need to start all over again and see how much more I can learn with my next project!
Thanks for this post! I’m a beginning spinner, but couldn’t resist buying 8 oz of this stuff to try out. I think I’ll break out my acid dyes this afternoon and see what happens!
Thank you so much for this. It was very informative and just what I needed!
Do you know if this was the fake cashmere that is normally made out of nylon, or was it some special rayon stuff? This post was so helpful, I’m happy to know that your hand spun fake cashmere is machine washable. I’m hoping to get some to blend with wool to make a sweater than is machine wash and dry.