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Jacqui Carey in this new book Elizabethan Stitches gives as a source for her silk a company I've never heard of and I wonder if you have: Devere Silk devereyarns.co.uk. I've been to the site and it looks really interesting, but I don't understand the idea of denier (although I do know what it means) in relation to other stranded silks. Help!

Well, thanks for that Serinde, I REALLY needed a new silk !

I hadn't heard of these before, and they look lovely. Deniers have me foxed as well, but this may help -- Pipers' 90 Floss silk (which I assume is 90 denier) is about as thick as 1/2 strand of DMC. Kanagawa 1000 denier (which is used for Gloriana's Princess Perle Petite) is between #12 and #8 perle.
To confuse the issue a bit (sorry), Dinky Dyes has three silk perles which they market as their equivalent to #5, #8 and #12 and they are, respectively, 1900, 1000 and 600 denier.

Hope this gives you some idea...

PS I don't know what difference it makes (if any) whether it's perle or flat silk

Oh, another thing, Japanese flat silk is made up of sugas (or filaments) which I presume are the same as the "threads" mentioned by DeVere. I've marked the 10 suga thread as "more than 1 strand" and the 16 suga thread as "less than 2 strands"

Great information Mabel! I had always wondered what the "d" stood for after the DD perles - I knew it referred to the weight. I guess I just associate denier with tights and stockings, how silly that I forgot that this unit can apply to other fibres too......

PS - Mabel watch your post counts today......!

Mabel, as always, your answer helps hugely. I may have to investigate them, seeing as I now have another two commissions from Edinburgh for capital letters from the Wode partbooks (along the same lines as the original letter "O"). I was thinking that I might do one in silk, having been totally inspired by Elizabethan Stitches. Well, we'll see.

And I'm watching that post count!

Maybe we should all be asking Mabel lots of questions this week so we can help move that count along. I know Rose is past the 20,000. Is anyone else even close?

Carole

I was intrigued by this discussion as I recognized denier as a French word (my mother tongue), so I went to have a look at some French sites.
Here is what I found:
When it comes to silk, denier (den) indicates the weight in grams of 9000 meters of thread. So for any given length, the heavier the thread, the ''fatter'' the thread is; the higher the denier number, the ''fatter'' the silk is.
For example, is a silk is 10 deniers, that means that 9000 meters of thread will weigh 10 grams

This actually applies to hosiery as well: 15 denier tights will be finer than 40 denier tights.

Here is the site where I found the information:
http://dentelle-et-papillon.over-blog.c ... 08283.html" target="_blank" target="_blank
If you open this URL in Chrome, it should give you the option of translating the page into the language of your choice, but if it doesn't work out, I'll be happy to translate whatever you need in English.

HTH!