Twisty and Windy

In my house, that could be a description of a really fun motorcycle route. However, today I’m talking about yarn. Of course. Although the weather outside is pretty awesome. My favorite time of year here. The iris, the fruit trees, some late daffodils, the blue bells are all starting to bloom. The red bud trees are gorgeous; the spirea and the kerria are flowering. But I digress. It is hard to ignore as the view from my work space is full of color.

Ok, back to the yarn. This post is part of the rabbit warren from last week. This particular pathway began with an email from Furl’s. This company, based in Austin, makes really awesome ergonomically wonderful crochet hooks. They are now also venturing into yarn. The email was promoting said yarn as “better for crocheting” and talked about spinning it with a z twist rather than an s twist. Hmmm. I had no idea what they meant and, wow, why hadn’t anybody figured this out before.

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Ok, I know, I’m still a novice in many ways. It’s not a revolutionary idea just now surfacing. What great marketing on their part for those of us who have never thought about such stuff though.

What they are talking about is that depending on the direction the yarn is wound and the direction the crafter twists the yarn (or not) around their hook or needles, the yarn may or may not unravel/separate. This is why some yarns tend towards splitting.

Turns out, from my research, single ply yarns are usually twisted in a clockwise direction – the z twist (so looking at the yarn the twist points down to the left) and multi-ply yarns are twisted the opposite way – the s twist. That is not a hard a fast rule however. Here’s a link to an article on Yarnsub.com if you want to learn more…no sense me repeating all that here (and a side note is if you don’t know about this site, you should explore….it can help you find alternatives for those pesky yarns that patterns call for that are unavailable).

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So, back to the Furl’s email. Since sometimes even multi-ply yarns can be finished with a z twist and since I couldn’t quite tell from the pictures on their website and since I really wanted to see this yarn in person and since another email came with a bundle offer where you get yarn and a crochet hook for less $ than usual, I succumbed (how’s that for a run-on sentence? Impressive no?!). Today, via the postal service, I should be receiving a skein of (wait for it) purple yarn and a new crochet hook (because just like bowls, you can never have too much or too many). I just want to see if their yarn has anything to say for itself besides what I have learned is not so unusual.

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And here’s another link that explains ply, yarn weights and other cool stuff. The Knitting Authority is for knitters only but has useful information for the rest of us too :).

So here’s the answer (the postman came, yay!). The Furl’s yarn is a 4 ply that is z twisted and if my reading glasses aren’t deceiving me, so are each of the 4 singles (a z-on-z). So on the minority side of what is normal but not revolutionary, at least at this point. Searching for z twist yarns on the Yarnsub website brings up several things to look for, if that’s important to you. Depends on how you throw your yarn around your implement. And of course if the yarn is wound tightly enough (like some of us peeps) then it might not make a huge difference. Or, maybe working with looser yarns will enforce the “it’s the process not the product” idea.

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By now you can tell that I had trouble staying on task. Most of these fleurs pics were taken this morning. Then I went and sorted through my stash for the accompanying yarns. So much fun. I was waiting for the postal service to arrive though so not really wasting time.

Happy Spring everyone!

Here’s your other twisty windy. This was in Italy…one of my other lives. Whoop!