[HNW] Eterna Silk opinions?

[lisleong@k12.hi.us]

> I am starting to merchant in the SCA in a small way, and I am 
> considering the Eterna as my silk line, but would love to have the 
> input of the folks on this list before I make my decision "permanent."

	I have mixed feelings about Eterna.  They have a 
lovely range of colors and I generally like working 
with their stranded floss.  However, I find that the 
quality is very uneven.  Sometimes the filaments are 
very soft, loose, and "flat," but at other times 
they're very tightly twisted into an almost solid 
core.  Not plied like the mini-twist, but so tightly 
compacted together that there's no way you could do 
something like split stitch with one strand.  No 
matter what you do, you can't discern the individual 
silk filaments.

	On the other hand, some batches are very nice.  
The skeins I purchased several years ago are of a 
better quality than the ones I've ordered recently.

	I've ordered 50+ of a single color and the range 
in quality has been vast in a singl

e batch.  Many of 
them have knots and breaks in the middle of a skein, 
leaving undyed patches or loose trailing filament 
bloops.  Also, skeins supposedly have 6(12) strands 
but I have many skeins where there are only 4(8).  In 
my last order it was especially a problem with the 
color black.

	There is no local supplier where I live so all 
the floss I've purchased has been via mail order.  If 
you can look at the skeins individually before you 
buy you could probably avoid many of the above 
problems but if you're going to be the retailer I 
don't know how that would be handled.  My dealings 
with Peri at Eterna have been spotty at best.

	However, all that being said, I still use quite 
a bit of it as it's inexpensive, reeled instead of 
spun, and has a wonderful range of colors.

--annora