Yarn

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Yarn

Yarn is a long continuous length of interlocked fiber

Fiber

Fiber or fibre is a class of materials that are continuous filaments or are in discrete elongated pieces, similar to lengths of yarn. They are very important in the biology of both plants and animals, for holding tissue s together....
s, suitable for use in the production of textile

Textile

A textile is a flexible material consisting of a network of natural or artificial fibres often referred to as thread or yarn. Yarn is produced by Spinning raw wool fibres, linen, cotton, or other material on a spinning wheel to produce long strands known as yarn....
s, sewing

Sewing

Sewing or stitching is the fastening of cloth, leather, furs, bark, or other flexible materials, using Sewing needle and yarn. Its use is nearly universal among human populations and dates back to Paleolithic times ....
, crochet

Crochet

Crochet is a process of creating fabric from yarn or thread using a crochet hook. The word is derived from the Middle French word croc or croche, meaning hook. Crocheting, similar to knitting, consists of pulling loops of yarn through other loops....
ing, knitting

Knitting

Knitting is a method by which yarn may be turned into cloth. Knitting consists of loops called stitches pulled through each other. The active stitches are held on a needle until another loop can be passed through them....
, weaving

Weaving

Weaving is the textile arts in which two distinct sets of yarn, called the Warp and the filling or weft , are interlaced with each other to form a textile....
, embroidery

Embroidery

File:Kazakh rug chain stitch embroidery.jpgEmbroidery is the art or handicraft of decorating Textile or other materials with sewing needle and yarn....
and rope

Rope

A rope is a length of fibers, twisted or braided together to improve strength for pulling and connecting. It has tensile strength but is too flexible to provide compressive strength ....
making.

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Structure

See main article Spinning (textiles)

Spinning (textiles)

Spinning is an ancient textile arts in which fiber crop, animal fiber or synthetic fiber fibers are twisted together to form yarn . For thousands of years, fiber was spun by hand using simple tools, the Spindle and distaff....

Spun yarn is made by twisting or otherwise bonding staple

Staple (textiles)

Staple is a term referring to naturally formed clusters or locks of wool fibres throughout a fleece that are held together by cross fibres. The staple strength of wool is one of the major determining factors when Spinning yarn as well as the sale price of greasy wool....
fiber

Fiber

Spinning (textiles)

Upper Paleolithic

The Upper Paleolithic is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age as it is understood in Europe, Africa and Asia. Very broadly it dates to between 40,000 and 9th millennium BC years ago, roughly coinciding with the appearance of "high" culture and before the advent of agriculture....
, and yarn spinning was one of the very first processes to be industrialized. Spun yarns may contain a single type of fiber, or be a blend of various types. Combining synthetic fibers (which have high strength, artificial lustre, and fire retardant qualities) with natural fibers (which have good water absorbance and skin comforting qualities) is very common. The most widely used blends are cotton

Cotton

Cotton is a soft, staple fiber that grows in a form known as a boll around the seeds of the cotton plant a shrub native to tropical and subtropical regions around the world, including the Americas, India and Africa....
-polyester

Polyester

Polyester is a category of polymers which contain the ester functional group in their main chain. Although there are many polyesters, the term "polyester" as a specific material most commonly refers to polyethylene terephthalate ....
and wool

Wool

Wool is the fiber derived from the specialized skin cells, called follicles, of animals in the Caprinae family, principally domestic sheep, but the hair of certain species of other Mammalia such as cashmere goat, llamas, rabbits and keeshonds may also be called wool....
-acrylic fiber

Acrylic fiber

Acrylic fibers are synthetic fibers made from a polymer with an average molecular weight of ~100,000, about 1900 monomer units. To be called acrylic in the U.S, the polymer must contain at least 85% acrylonitrile monomer....
blends. Blends of different natural

Natural

Natural can refer to various topics within science and mathematics, music, and other areas.In science and mathematics, natural may refer to:...
fibers are common too, especially with more expensive fibers such as angora

Angora wool

Angora wool or Angora fiber refers to the downy coat produced by the Angora rabbit. While their names are similar, Angora fiber is distinct from mohair, which comes from the Angora goat....
and cashmere

Cashmere wool

Cashmere wool, usually simply known as cashmere, is a fiber obtained from the Cashmere goat. The word cashmere derives from an archaic spelling of Kashmir....
.

Yarns are made up of a number of plies, each ply

Plying

In the textile arts, plying is a process used to create a strong, balanced yarn. It is done by taking two or more strands of yarn that each have a twist to them and putting them together....
being a single spun yarn. These single plies of yarn are twisted in the opposite direction (plied) together to make a thicker yarn. Depending on the direction of this final twist, the yarn will be known as s-twist or z-twist. For a single ply, the direction of the final twist is the same as its original twist.

Filament yarn consists of filament fibers twisted together. Thicker monofilament

Monofilament line

Monofilament line is a thin string made from a single fiber. Most fishing line is made from monofilament because of its strength, availability in all pound-test kinds, and low cost....
s are typically used for industrial purposes rather than fabric production or decoration. Silk

Silk

Silk is a natural protein fiber, some forms of which can be weaving into textiles. The best-known type of silk is obtained from Pupa#Cocoons made by the larvae of the mulberry silkworm Bombyx mori reared in captivity ....
is a natural filament, and synthetic filament yarns are used to produce silk-like effects.

Texturized yarns are made by a process of air texturizing (sometimes referred to as taslanizing
Taslanizing

Taslanizing or the Taslan process, is the copyrighted trade name for air textured yarns. In German the word is Luftex. The process is simply feeding a bundle of continuous filament yarns into a small jet nozzle with various amounts of slack....
), which combines multiple filament yarns into a yarn with some of the characteristics of spun yarns.

Measurement

Craft yarns

Yarn quantities are usually measured by weight in ounces or grams. In the United States, Canada and Europe, balls of yarn for handcrafts are sold by weight. Common sizes include 25g, 50g, and 100g skein

Skein

Skein may refer to:* A long coil of yarn or hair intended for weaving, dyeing, or heat setting. Yarn sold in skeins often needs to be re-wound into spools or balls using a swift depending on the application....
s. Some companies also primarily measure in ounces with common sizes being three-ounce

Ounce

This article is about the unit of mass. For the unit of force, see Pound-force. For the unit of volume, see Fluid ounce. For all other uses, see Ounce ....
, four-ounce, six-ounce, and eight-ounce skeins. These measurements are taken at a standard temperature and humidity, because yarn can absorb moisture from the air. The actual length of the yarn contained in a ball or skein can vary due to the inherent heaviness of the fiber and the thickness of the strand; for instance, a 50 g skein of lace weight mohair may contain several hundred meters, while a 50 g skein of bulky wool may contain only 60 meters.

There are several thicknesses of yarn, also referred to as weight. This is not to be confused with the measurement of weight listed above. The Craft Yarn Council of America is making an effort to promote a standardized industry system for measuring this, numbering the weights from 1 (finest) to 6 (heaviest). Some of the names for the various weights of yarn from finest to thickest are called lace, fingering, sock, sport, double-knit (or DK), worsted, aran, bulky, and super-bulky. This naming convention is more descriptive than precise; fiber artists disagree about where on the continuum each lies, and the precise relationships between the sizes.

A more precise measurement of yarn weight, often used by weavers, is wraps per inch (wpi). The yarn is wrapped snugly around a ruler and the number of wraps that fit in an inch are counted.

Labels on yarn for handcrafts often include information on gauge

Gauge (knitting)

In knitting, the word Gauge, technical abbreviation GG, refers to "Knitting Machines" fineness size .Indeed "Gauge" is the unit of measure, a ?size? that expressed by a well precise number of needle gives the Power Workable Size of a Knitting Machine....
, known in the UK as tension, which is a measurement of how many stitches and rows are produced per inch or per centimeter on a specified size of knitting needle or crochet hook. The proposed standardization uses a four-by-four inch/ten-by-ten centimeter knitted or crocheted square, with the resultant number of stitches across and rows high made by the suggested tools on the label to determine the gauge.

In Europe textile engineers often use the unit tex, which is the weight in grams of a kilometer of yarn, or decitex, which is a finer measurement corresponding to the weight in grams of 10 kilometers of yarn. Many other units have been used over time by different industries.

Thread

Most types of embroidery thread come in a single size or weight; an exception is pearl or perle cotton, which comes in three weights, No. 3 (heaviest), No. 5, and No. 8 (finest).

Color

Yarn may be used undyed, or may be colored with natural or artificial dye

Dye

A dye can generally be described as a colored substance that has an Chemical affinity to the Wiktionary:substrate to which it is being applied....
s. Most yarns have a single uniform hue, but there is also a wide selection of variegated yarns:

heathered or tweed: yarn with flecks of different colored fiber
ombre: variegated yarn with light and dark shades of a single hue
multi-colored: variegated yarn with two or more distinct hues (a "parrot colorway" might have green, yellow and red)
self-striping: yarn dyed with lengths of color that will automatically create stripes in a knitted or crocheted object
marled: yarn made from strands of different-colored yarn twisted together, sometimes in closely-related hues

Yarn

Structure

Measurement

Craft yarns

Thread

Color

See also

External links