Apparel : Do It Yourself Knitting Yarn
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By: Anna Stenning
 
Date Submitted: 2009-05-12 01:33:52 - Article Views: 20119
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From sheep to shop, the process of producing knitting yarn and making it into something wearable could be described as a long and winding road. Modern techniques obviously make the process a good deal quicker, and the advent of synthetic fibres has speeded up this process even further. However, if you are feeling like getting in touch with traditional techniques there is nothing quite as satisfying as shearing a sheep one week and wearing a scarf you personally knitted from the wool the next.
Sheep shearing is possibly best left to burly bronzed blokes in the outback, especially as the annual process shears up to 3000 sheep a day. If you have nearby friendly farmer though, it is worth asking if you could buy some pure fleece from one of the sheep, especially if you explain that you'd like to make your own knitting yarn.
Once you've got hold of some fleece it needs to be thoroughly washed in a detergent to remove the grease and dead skin cells from the original owner! If you want to produce a slightly waterproof garment from the knitting yarn, such as an Arran jumper, use a gentle detergent that does not strip all the lanolin away. Once the wool has been cleaned and dried it needs to be carded.
Hand carding brushes for knitting yarn production are used to either remove unwanted matter from the fleeces such as vegetation or to mix two types of fibres together. After carding, combing the wool allows the fibres to be arranged in a way that makes spinning possible by making all the wool fibres lie in the same direction.
The lose material is then wound onto a spindle and twisted to produce knitting yarn that can be dyed. Vegetable dyes are a traditional way of colouring yarn, and are as simple as boiling up peelings, roots and petals in a vat. Vegetable dyes produce subtle and muted hues; some of the most popular are onion skins, which can produce either red or mustard colours and last a long time without fading.
Once the wool has been dyed and washed it can be wound onto a ball, officially becoming knitting yarn. To produce a sizeable garment, it is a wise idea to dye the wool in a batch to obtain a uniform colour throughout all the balls of wool. Producing yarn in this way is a time consuming, but ultimately rewarding experience and certainly helps connect knitting fans to the traditions behind garment production before industrial methods became commonplace. |
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Anna Stenning is an expert on DIY knitting yarn as she regularly knits her own scarfs.
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