Fiber Content and Texture of Yarn

Hi there, I'm Corrina Ferguson for the Knitting Circle. In this video, we're going to talk about the fibers and the textures of different yarns. So let's take a look. Let's talk about fibers and textures in yarns. One of the things that I'm going to tell you upfront is yarn labels will have washing instructions or laundry instructions on them. And they'll say whether or not you can iron them, whether or not you can put them in the dryer and the washer. Unless you're giving something to a baby or a small child, when the mama does not have time to be worrying about hand washing stuff, I suggest you hand wash all of your knits. You've put way too much time and effort into them to accidentally ruin something. But when you're giving them as gifts, of course, you have to be a little more thinking about what you're giving people, but I want to talk about the different fibers and the different textures and how that kind of works for different projects. So the first thing I want to show you is, this is the Laresca shawl and it has lace. I'll hold that up on my hand so you can see a little better the pretty lace. Has a Latvian braid and then it has slip stitch work. And in order to make the most of these and make these look the prettiest, a very smooth or plied yarn looks best. You can experiment with different yarns with different projects, but I always suggest that you swatch to make sure you're going to get an effect that you like, especially if you're choosing a totally different yarn than the design called for. When we look at the Carnivale cowl, we have a smooth silk wool blend and then we have a very fuzzy, I don't know if you can see the fuzz halo on your little screen there. We have a very fuzzy silk mohair blend and they're a beautiful contrast. It's a very different fabric when you look at them. One of the things that you need to think about, though, when you're thinking about the fibers and the textures that you use in yarns is whether or not the yarn is comfortable for you to wear next to your skin. This would be worn right against someone's neck. If someone, for example, was allergic to mohair, this would not be a good choice. So if you're giving something as a gift you always want to keep in mind that there are a lot of people that do have fiber allergies. So that's something to keep in mind. The other thing is I have a tendency to touch things on the inside of my arm to see how soft they feel to me, to see if it's actually something that I would want to wear without a layer in between it. A lot of times when people wear what I would call crunchy wool sweaters, they're going to wear another shirt under them because they're in a weather climate where it's not going to be right next to your skin. The Halaine tee, we're going to set this out so you can see the pretty neck ruffles here. The Halaine is actually knit in a wool blend that is very nice for next to the skin. And it has good stitch definition for these little flower knot stitches. And so that's something where you want to make sure that you like to wear it next to your skin. Obviously with something like this, it's a summer, spring tee kind of thing, or warm weather tee. You're not going to be wearing anything under it per se. I mean, you may have a tank top under it but you're not going to have any extra sleeves under it. So you definitely want to make sure that it's next to the skin soft. If it's something for a child that's going to get a lot of wear, you might want to consider a blend that can be, like I said, machine washed, because we don't want to make life harder for the mamas. But again, you still want to make sure that that's going to feel good next to your skin. Another thing that we consider when we're talking about yarns is the durability of the yarn. This is, I'll try to get this so you can see the whole sock. There we go. This is a sock and it's in a fingering weight yarn on very small needles, I believe like a 1 1/2 maybe which is tiny little needles, they're almost like pins. And it's knitted a very tight gauge so it's very durable when you wear it inside your shoe, cause obviously we've got some rubbing going on there, but it also has some nylon in it. And so that nylon is actually a reinforcement. So think about when we have our fibers, what's the actual fiber content of the yarn and what properties does that bring to yarn? And it's not just about how it touches, it's about how it wears and that's where the nylon comes in handy to make it stronger. For a while and still now, you'll see a lot of sock yarns that are a a blend that has some cashmere in them and that's all fine and dandy. I mean, it's glorious and it's luxurious and it makes you feel like you have princess footies, but once there's some nylon in there too, that's not going to very wear very well. Now, if you're using a cashmere blend that's a sock yarn to make a shawl to wear around your neck, by all means, treat yourself like a princess there, but just keep in mind what the fiber and what the texture of the yarn happen to be. And then you also have to think about what the yarn looks like as it's being knit up. Is the fuzziness going to obscure things? We have a super fuzzy yarn here. You can see this is actually a synthetic blend and it's got a super fuzzy thing here wrapped in another fuzzy string. So when you knit this up, it actually ends up making a fabric that is very fuzzy as well. And we want to keep in mind, do we want to see every individual stitch? Do we mind if it just goes crazy fuzzy? And another example of that, if we go back to the cowl with the mohair, you can see the stitches when you look closely but really it just has a beautiful halo of the mohair. And so you want to consider that when you're doing things, to think about what kind of appearance do you want to have? When push comes to shove, your best choice is just, try to use yarn that the designer called for. But there's a lot of resources online where you can talk about "What would be an acceptable substitute for this?" or "I don't want to wear mohair next to my skin, what's something else that would have that nice fuzzy quality?" But just keep these things in mind when you're choosing the yarn for your project. Thank you so much for joining me to learn more about your yarn. Check out our website for more great videos.