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Yarn Deconstruction!!!

You know it's a pretty serious thing if I'm taking yarn apart to see what it's made of or made from. You very well know that I'm a hand spinner from the wayback. I like to do things traditionally, but I have found over the years, that I do indeed, enjoy doing things in new ways. I have spun my fair share of art yarns and I still like to every now and then. However, I still believe that there are certain rules that should always be followed, NO MATTER WHAT!

 

It started with a seemingly innocent skein of Lopi style, chunky yarn. I was contemplating whether or not there was enough to actually knit something useful from it. As I was playing with it, it started to come apart on my knitting needles. This bugged the daylights out of me because this is commercial yarn and it should most definitely not be coming apart. I will not mention any names or who the yarn manufacturer is. I don't play that way. I have already written them and explained to them what Lopi yarn is and how this yarn fails to make the grade.

 

Traditionally, Lopi yarn is a loosely spun yarn made from Icelandic sheep fleece intended to be used for the construction of sturdy, warm outer garments like ski sweaters, hats, mittens and perhaps slippers. It's usually spun using all of the wool in the fleece, meaning that the thel (the 3-4 inch undercoat) and the tog (super long, 7 - 11 inches) are carded together and then spun from the resulting batts or roving. The two pictures, above, show some teased Icelandic fleece that I've prepared for spinning and some I've left in the lock. My knowledge of Lopi yarn construction and the fact that I've spun quite a bit of Lopi yarn made me want to deconstruct this commercial Lopi yarn.

 

 

I untwisted the yarn which was fairly easy to do as it doesn't have much twist in it to begin with. I then gently teased apart the resulting strands to see what it looked like. I didn't find anything that remotely looked like Icelandic thel or tog, let alone any fiber longer than about two inches! What I did find was very short and disconcertedly resembled dryer lint or floor sweepings! I kept thinking that somewhere in the 10 yards I'd unraveled there just had to be one fiber that was at least 3 inches, but alas, there was none. Please do keep in mind that if you were to deconstruct my yarn, you would have tons of beautiful, long fibers!!

 

The next thing I did was to take the pile I'd pulled and teased apart and I tried to hand card some of it. This is where things began to really fall apart. I'd say that this stuff (which I've ceased to call Icelandic fleece) was of the consistency of cotton, but wooly cotton. The picture above is what it looks like after I pried it out of my hand carder (actually a dog slicker, but does the job of carding quite well).

 

I now know why it was falling apart while I was knitting with it. I'm re-spinning all of this 'wool' and will be plying it with some very nice Coopworth, which is a lot stronger than what the commercial Lopi was spun from. I'm pulling off pieces of the yarn that are about 18 inches long, am splitting it down the middle and spinning it much like pencil roving, but I'm using long draw because it has the feel of coarse cotton and is spinning up like coarse cotton.

Here's a website with more information about Icelandic with a lot of pictures and technical info, http://www.icelandicsheep.com/Icelandic Fleece.htm

 

posted: 12/21/2011 04:41 AM. Where's yours??