Here I posted a couple of photos of a soysilk spinning project. Yes, I had been calling it bamboo, then.. I actually read the label on the bag, whoops. I had spun the soy into energized singles while manipulating color and weight then knit it right off the spindle. The most challenging part of that was spinning thick after a stretch of finer spinning. Knitting it up I changed from knit to purl rows as color and weight changed. I now have a long, narrow scarf with great weight, drape, tactile and visual interest. I had a second bag of the soysilk that was earmarked for a matching hat. I thought about spinning up some alpaca and doing colorwork or a band in the same style of the scarf and the rest done with alpaca etc. 
But but but, spinning lovely white fiber for meters on end gets quite tedious so simply plying a single of soysilk and a single of alpaca was out. After reading this article in Fall 08 Knitty by the Loop lady, I was quite inspired. I should be able to mix the fibers, blend those colors in to the alpaca, right? Of course, I have neither drum carder or the hand carders, dog brushes or whatnot around. 
After a couple false starts I found the only way to achieve the blending I wanted was to break the fibers down to comparable lengths so they would draw fairly evenly. I alternated several thin layers of the alpaca and soysilk making sure to keep the fibers going in the same direction. Then I patted it down and squished (oh yes getting technical here). 
Once the pile felt dense I gently pulled the ends as I twisted the fiber. This allowed me check for any soysilk globs/clumps that snuck in and time to further floof them out.
Out came the trusty spindle, gift from a goddess and it was time to see if the fiber would succumb to my demands. The fiber must bend to my will! It must! I love the warmth of the alpaca and lightness of it and the colors of the soysillk. Is a lovely, tough, fine, strong, able to handle being handled and shuffled about without having a complete collapse too much to ask for from spindlespun? I don't think so.
As I spun, the single formed with ten to twenty cm stretches of soysilk then alternatively spun with both mixed in equally.
I did about thirty meters before winding it off on a nostepinne for a quick ply z-spin two ply job.
Once plied, I grabbed some needles and knit up a stitch that had been in mind for a few days now. I am quite pleased with how the color behaved on the tiniest of swatches. I know it will lay differently in the full blown project which prompted some design features to showcase, if you will, the play of color.
Starting with 100g of alpaca and 100g of soysilk. Shooting for at least 300m of two ply. No idea if that is enough fiber or way too much for the wpi I'm spinning. Humm.
Instant gratification is not had oft in spinning or knitting. It does take time. Since spinning the soysilk/alpaca up for the project will take a few days, I started a design draft of the project subbing in cotton. I had picked up a couple balls of Peaches & Creme while in Charleston intending to submit a fab summer bag design to Amy but we had to relocate and I completely missed the deadline. So I've repurposed the cotton for the first run, already a variation as I had to take in to account the very different behavior of the cotton compared to the soysilk/alpaca blend. No, I can not explain why I would purposely design something which would have you wind up with an assload (another high falutin' technical term) of ends to weave in other than - it makes it look pretty.
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