Warmth, again and again

If you want real warmth in clothing, it needs to block air flow like a fine bed sheet.

With knit wool that means lots of twist in the yarn, and yarns knit tightly together.

Lots of twist means very fine plies. For most things, I like singles of ~5,600 ypp.

Then I do not ply yarn very tightly, so that as yarn is knit, the yarn deforms and "fills" all gaps.

The commercial yarn that this concept is built on is the old Lions Brand Fisherman's Wool.  This yarn is no longer made. Production was moved to China, and the new  Lions Brand Fisherman's Wool is different.  The new Fisherman's Wool is much more pleasant to knit, but the resulting fabric is not as warm or durable.

To block air flow through the yarn, the wool fibers must be between 20 and 40 microns apart.  Closer and they tend to conduct heat. Farther apart and air flows between the fibers carrying heat.  Keeping fibers that close together takes a lot of twist.

For wet weather, I like long wool, spun worsted at 5,600 ypp.  Twist is about 9 tpi. These singles get loosely plied up into a sport weight (1,000 ypp) yarn.

Once you get below freezing, things can get really cold.  There, I like fine wool, spun woolen at 5,600 ypp and 12 tpi. These get plied up into 5-ply at 1,000 ypp or Aran weight at 500 ypp for Arctic  (or Antarctic) conditions.

Ok, these yarns are a bit of extra work, but they are warm, and nothing is worse that being really cold.

The the yarn needs to be knit so tightly with fine needles, so there are no gaps in the fabric.

If you knit with 2 or 3-ply yarns there will not be enough twist to hold the individual wool fibers close together and the wind will blow right through the yarn.

If you use a 5-ply with enough ply twist to hold the yarn round, then there will be gaps between the yarn and the wind will blow through the fabric carrying heat away from the body.

Hand spun, hand knit fabrics can be so warm that they feel like magic.  Most do not make the cut.

Knitting 10-ply

It is "gansey yarn" on steroids.

The thing that jumped out at me was that the fabric is more elastic than fabric knit from other any wool yarn that I have ever knit before. 10-ply has a different look and feel than the commercial mill spun yarns.  My hand spun gansey yarn looks just like mill spun gansey yarn, but there is no commercial equivalent of this stuff.

Otherwise, "gansey yarn" can be knit into a  "commercial  duty" textile -  and able to stand up to hard use, while 10-ply is for industrial duty textiles to stand up to harder use, or for use in colder weather.

What this project really taught me is that I can easily use 5,600 ypp singles as building blocks to make what ever yarn that I need, ranging from 2-ply to 10-ply or more.  While cabling is good, it changes the feel of the yarn. Now, I no longer have to resort to cabling to easily prepare a 6-ply or 8-ply yarn.  This was a worthwhile evolution.

Why do we not see these high ply yarns any more?  Because they are expensive.  The power to run machinery costs money, and a 10-ply Aran weight yarn takes more than 6 times as much twist as a 3-py of the same grist. Modern hand spinners have not needed heavy duty yarn and hence did not put the effort into inserting the twist.  It is like building a palace of stone or lath and plaster.  The plaster looks good and is cheaper, but the stone endures.   Likewise, 3-ply Aran yarn looks good and is inexpensive, but the 10-ply is warmer and it endures.

It takes time and effort for fancy knitting. I think it is worth spinning the best yarn I can get or make.  Sometimes that will be 10-ply.  I do expect to make more 10-ply, 8-ply, 6-ply and of course 5-ply because some knitting projects are worth spinning better yarn.  Despite the yarn mills promotion of yarn forms that they can produce more cheaply ( fewer plies, core spun, etc.), sometimes more plies are simply better.  However, modern mills do not offer such yarns any more.  And slow hand spinning does not the allow the practical production of such yarns, so the only way to get such yarns is to put in the effort to learn to spin fast.

None of this changes my feeling about mill spun warp yarns cabled up into knitting -cabling produces a different class of yarns that produce a different class of fabrics - also worth putting a lot of effort into knitting.

Handspun 10-ply Aran yarn

It can be done.

10-ply,. 700 yards per pound. 16 wpi.    That right!

If you take the singles that were hand spun worsted for weaving at 16 hanks per pound from Shetland wool, and ply them up as 5 X 2-ply you get a yarn that the same thickness as the Yorkshire gansey yarn, but is 30% denser and thus much warmer.  The first small skein is being blocked now,

and will go to the Guild meeting  for show and tell.

I figure ~100 hours to spin the yarn for a Aran fisherman's sweater and a 100 hours to knit.  A wife could do an Aran in 3 months just working on it 2 or 3 hours per day.  It would be much much warmer than a gansey made of Yorkshire 5-ply @ 1000 ypp ( 50 hours to spin and  80 hours to knit) .  Well worth the extra effort if your man is fishing the North Sea.

The little square wooden thing is a "plying comb".  It helps to organize the singles and makes producing 5-ply yarn much easier, and the yarn more consistent.  I like historians - even long dead ones  : ).  They tell me about the the tools I need to do the job right.

The first skein off  the wheel this morning was 5-ply @ 1,800 ypp.  Interesting, but not much practical value that I can see.

The process that I now like  is to spin 16 or 18 hank/ lb singles and make 2-ply.  (Come on, you spin for fun.  Spinning fine means more fun per pound.  And, it means fabrics that are lighter, more durable, and warmer.) The 2-ply is stronger more stable, and easier to handle. Then, 2 X 2-ply is light fingering, 3 X 2-ply is  sport and 4 X 2-ply is worsted weight.  Of these the 3X 2-ply is the winner for most knitting.   The more plies make it  more consistent, warmer, and more durable than the 2 or 3-ply worsted weight that is more common.  More plies allow the fabric to be softer and more flexible than the 5-ply of similar grist and twist.