Types of Knitting Yarn

Video Transcript

"Hi, I’m Kelsey. I’ve been knitting for 10 years and I’m a member of several knitting organizations. I’m going to talk today about different types of yarn you can use for your project. Many times when you have a pattern, it will specify a specific brand and type of yarn to use, which by all means is good to follow. You also can substitute yarns. There is a whole huge variety of different yarns you can use. I’m going to present a very small sampling of them, but you should definitely go to your local yarn store and touch things and ask questions and see what’s available to you. The most common and most well-known type of yarn is going to be wool. Wool comes from a sheep, it’s pretty simple, Its very warm. It can be scratchy, but it can also be very soft. It traps heat and moisture very well. This is a little tweed sort of type here and if you look really closely you can see that its made of two different strands of slightly different colors twisted together. I’ll try to separate those for you. See like this. Each of those strands is called a ply, and you can buy wool that’s one ply, that’s just one strand, two ply like this, or even three ply. That changes the thickness and the strength of it. The ply’s can be different colors or the same colors. And that’s wool. There is washable wool, but most wool you have to wash by hand and be a little bit careful about the care of it because it can shrink. This is a blend of wool and a synthetic material, so you can throw it in the washer or throw it in the dryer which is kind of nice. The feel is not as nice as with real wool, and the colors can often be not as nice. That’s a synthetic blend; there are also pure synthetics such as a lot of the Red Heart, the kind you find at the five and dime that are made of plastic. Those can also be very soft, but sometimes they’re a little bit harsh to the touch and a little uncomfortable. They come in a huge range of colors, even fluorescent and glow-in-the-dark which is kind of fun. This is another kind of blend with wool and mohair which makes it extremely soft and gives it a little furry feeling there, which is kind of a nice thing. There are all sorts of others. There’s cashmere yarn. Angora is particularly nice; you can see how fuzzy that is. You can’t touch it on the internet of course but it’s incredibly soft which is nice. There’s also cotton. Cotton is really lightweight, and really nice if you’re making sort of a summer garment. There are washing issues with it too. It also can be a little harsh on the skin and usually less soft. There are very soft cottons though so that’s definitely not true of all cottons. Another nice thing for lightweight summer garments is silk. It’s very expensive, much more so than wool or cotton, but really kind of gorgeous. This is variegated, which means it comes in different colors. Many yarns are like that, and this is variegated silk which is very pretty. This is variegated wool; hand dyed which is really nice. The one’s I’ve shown you so far have all been sort of a uniform thickness. You also can get yarn that comes in different thicknesses. This is actually handspun by me, I spun it. But even a lot of the yarns that you buy in the store will vary in thickness, and that gives a sort of artsy fun uneven sort of texture to the yarn which can be nice. There are a whole bunch of different kinds of synthetics and I can’t even get into all of them. There’s rayon, but rayon might be natural. There’s polyester. This is actually a ribbon yarn. This is rayon, and if you look there is actually a very fine thinly woven ribbon. It’s very loose and drapey, and gives it almost an entirely different fabric than knitting with wool or with cotton which is interesting. You have novelty yarns too which come in different textures. This is chenille, which has a thread core with fibers sort of woven into that, which makes it very fuzzy. It’s incredibly soft. This is a cotton chenille, but it comes in other kinds of fabrics too like rayon. Then you have boucle, which is yarn that has little bumps in it like this. You have this common thin cord and then you have bumps coming off which makes a very fun fabric. It comes in different colors. This is another variation of that, you’ve got furry loops coming off, which gives it a sort of fun fur look when it’s knitted up. Those are some of the different materials you might use in a project. Again, look at your pattern, and look at the type of garment you are trying to create. Go to a local yarn store and touch things and feel things and see what would be the best for what you’re working for. "