Exploring the qualities of yarn
In preparation for this project I have reviewed some of my yarn stash. Here are a few photos:
Left: These wools are varying thicknesses and one is a bouclé. I love the very loosely spun thick one to the left. They are all from New Zealand.
Right: White cotton chenille (just waiting to be dyed), crochet cottons and a ribbon style cotton/nylon/rayon blend manufactured by Colinette in Wales.
Left: This yarn label says P.A. 100%. Could that be polyester acrylic I wonder?
Left: This ribbon style yarn is a rayon and polyester blend. It is really shiny, has a fabulous lustre as it twists and is a little furry.
Left: Silk yarns with many finishes. There are some very rough and tightly woven yarns (the blue and pink) along with some fine very smooth silk used for weaving (white and yellow hanks). My favourites are the greens and mulberry ones which are a mix of flat straw like finish and very course lumpy yarn. The lime colour is very lightly spun and tends to fall apart when used if it is handled a lot.
Here are a couple of my super thick yarns from New Zealand. Left picture: Top – wool and acrylic blend. Bottom – wool and alpaca blend.
Right: Tubular nylon. I have loads of this and use it extensively. Some are Anny Blatt which I picked up very cheaply in a bargain bin recently. Someone obviously didn’t know what they were worth. Others come from a range of dyers both here and in the UK, as well as a few from Colinette again. These are very useful to have around and some of my variegated ones are stunning.
Left: Bamboo and cotton blend.
Made in Australia.
Right: 100% Bamboo from New Zealand.
These are all very soft and made up of multiple strands sitting together.
Left: A range of metallic crochet yarns. Again these are very useful to have around as a bit of shimmer in a piece of work can make all the difference. The labels don’t actually say what they are made of but I assume they are some kind of viscose, nylon or polyester blend.
Right: An array of single balls of yarn either left over from projects or bought as ‘one offs’ in end of range sales. These are all blends of different types of synthetics and finishes.
Well, that’s just a few of what I have and doing this exercise has prompted me to get my stash out and think about how to reorganise the various yarns I own into something a bit more manageable. Picking through my boxes I came across a few things that I had forgotten about so it’s obviously time for a reshuffle so that I can find things more easily. Hmmmmm…. should I group in type, colour or thickness? My course manual suggests by colour.
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