Kate Downham wrote:In wool clothing, either wool to knit with, or clothes that are already knitted, is there anything to look for to decide whether it is made for long life?
When looking for knitting yarn - and this is true of the yarns used in woven fabrics, too, but it’s harder to check - the tighter the twist in the yarns, the longer the fabric will last. A tight twist holds the fibres together more firmly, which reduces abrasion. (Too much twist will also weaken a yarn, but it’s
much less likely you’ll encounter overspun yarn in the wild.) I’m of the opinion that any fibre can make a long-lasting, durable fabric,
as long as it’s spun correctly and used appropriately (ie stop using Merino for everything, people!).
Tight twist also reduces pilling. Those little balls that turn up on knitted items are made from the short fibres in the yarn, as they work their way free of the yarn they were spun into. Tighter twist = fibres caught more securely = less pilling.
Yarn with more plies (ie more individual strands twisted together to create the final yarn) will also generally be more durable than yarns with less. As you add plies, the yarn gets rounder, which means each individual ply is subjected to less abrasion in the finished garment.
The bad news is that commercially spun knitting yarns are almost universally underspun. It’s cheaper to produce that way. Out of all the people I know who spin their own yarn, I would say that at least half started doing so because they didn’t like the yarns in the shops and couldn’t get the sort of thing they
did want to work with any other way.
When I’m spinning my own yarns, I typically spin fine and tight and ply up to the gauge I want for a project. I don’t like knitting with bulky yarns, though, so that’s not a hardship for me.
When browsing commercial knitting yarns I look for:
Multiple plies (at least 3) - untwisting a section of the yarn in the skein will let you count them.A smooth, firm yarn construction - fuzziness now will only get worse later in the finished garment’s life, and often indicates low yarn twist.Micron count is sometimes available on ball bands or website descriptions - the lower the number, the softer the fibre. Soft = good for next to skin but more delicate, less soft = sturdier but scratchier ie good for outerwear.If it’s sock yarn, NOT merino. It’s simply too fine to work for something that goes through the kind of abuse a sock is subjected to.The ply direction in the final yarn - depending on which hand you tension the yarn with, the twist will either work with or against you. I knit with yarn in my right hand, so I prefer a Z twist yarn. People who tension with their left hand often find S twist yarns work better for them.
As Inge said, a firmer knitting gauge will also produce a longer lasting fabric. Historically, items were knit with smaller yarn and at a tighter gauge than today, because they needed things to last.
When I knit with any yarn, I use the needle size that makes a fabric I like. This is typically two or more sizes smaller than what the ball band says, though it depends on how I’m knitting it (some knitting styles produce a tighter gauge for me than others). For example, 8 ply/DK yarn’s recommended needle size is 4mm - 4.5mm. I usually knit it on 3.25mm - 3.5mm needles, and I’d go lower if the situation called for it.
