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.
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.
Just a FYI, not all mills have stopped making high ply yarns. The much-coveted Wollmeise sock yarns are 8 and 9 plies, and I am pretty sure a mill in the US started making a copycat base yarn after requests to do so.
ReplyDeletevampy
ReplyDeletetrue, true, true.
I was in LYS a few days ago, and there are a large array of high-ply knitting yarns now available.
And, I think I commented on a 10-ply wool sport weigh from Lion Brand (spun in Turkey)more than a year ago.
Still most Aran weight yarns are not actually constructed as 10-ply. Aran yarn constructed as 10-ply is warmer than Aran weight yarn constructed of fewer plies.
Why don't hand spinners make the real thing?
"Why don't hand spinners make the real thing?"
ReplyDelete:)
They don't have your extensive custom setup ;).
There's a current approach to learning about
the behaviors of rare breed wools in the 2015
and 2018 KnitBritish Wool Exploration Ravelry
thread - this is like your quest in Gansey, but
from a different angle - by
nonspinners who are sampling with
commercial preps of the breeds (i.e.,
not high-twist, high-ply).
In 2018, the mod is requiring yarn of
100% of the breed (no blends), and is
also requiring people to send swatches
through at least a couple of wash-wear
cycles to sample the wear performance of
the (breed) fabric.
:) again, this approach
is along the lines of your quest for
gansey-level performance, but from a
different angle - looking at the breed
fiber differences, not the yarn
structure.
Your hypothesis is that it should
be possible to structure yarn with
gansey performance; theirs is quite
modest - examine a knitting prejudice
that "all British wool is scratchy"
and therefore not worth knitting up
on one level, and on another, explore
the performance of some different
British breeds' fiber (next-to-skin
wearability, tendency to pill with
wear, dimensional stability,
felting tendency, tendency to halo, etc..
(There is a justified concern that
some breeds are on the verge of
dying out, so part of the effort
is to support the shepherds willing
to buck the commercial mono-cropping
for ease of producing consistent
commercial products - "wool".)
I can't afford $16-$29 a 100 gram skein
that shepherds/mills of rare breeds charge,
so I am spinning singles from UK and
US (and once, Canadian) sources of the
breed wools and
knitting those up.
Interestingly, my sample of (UK) Ryeland
seemed much more hygroscopic than
other breeds. Ryeland (and Southdown)
were said to have been a favored
wool of Queen Bess for stockings.
A blog on historical costumes, I think,
said that silk stocking life was
sometimes extended by wearing wool
under the silk. (Silk being more
affected by skin contact.)
In your case, you liked Romney for
the gansey yarn - at least as I
read you to this point in your
quest. If my experience with Ryeland
is not just a fluke of that sheep's
fleece sample, and if current Ryelands
still retain a difference
in water-attraction despite
"improvement" in breeding for meat
rather than fleece fineness,
then you probably
wouldn't choose Ryeland for a gansey!
:)