For a while now, I’ve been struggling with the tension of whether purchasing yarn or not is ‘okay’ or ‘acceptable’ for me. Recently, I had a conversation with someone who was surprised that I don’t really have a commercial yarn stash to which I answered, “But wait ’til you see my handspun stash!”
Whenever at festivals or yarn shops, of course there is a ton of yarn to admire and explore. Some of it calls to me – especially the interesting blends that I can then recreate in my handspun.
I had an interesting experience this summer that helped me parse some of this tension that I’ve been struggling with: I wanted to try a wool-flax blend that I’ve played with in the past but haven’t knit from commercial handspun.
Working in this yarn from a commercial preparation taught me a few things that I might want to think about when creating a blend like this in future: Tow flax or waste flax works its way free in the knitting and finished fabric so think about something smoother like line flax. The drape is awesome. The stitch definition is crisp. The fabric is actually a bit crisp. It feels more like a plant-based yarn rather than wool. And thickness matters – I played with this same yarn in DK weight and it was a slightly different experience. The fabric is very different – it lacks the same drape and while still more plant-based than woolly, the fabric is slightly heavier.
Because I had previously played with multiple fibres in-one-blend yarns, I knew I would probably enjoy this particular yarn. The less and less wool is present, the more the yarn will behave as the other fibres present.
Previously, I had played with a BFL/Alpaca/Tussah Silk/Flax blend that turned out beautifully. It was a 2-ply that came out at 1350YPP with a texture to it that didn’t feel prickly or unppleasant. To date, I haven’t knit with that yarn and it’s on my list to pull out and put to the true test, which is making fabric.
Playing with commercial yarns is slightly different – they can be very even and behave in a certain way that can be different from handspun. If the initial blend isn’t blended extremely well in those early stages of fibre preparation, the finished yarn will have areas of unevenness compared to commercial yarns. As well, the handspun will be difficult to spin evenly as various fibres are pulled forward by the twist, capturing them in uneven ways compared to a truly even, well blended preparation. Sometimes commercial yarns are chemically treated to allow different fibres to cohere, which is very different from handspun. Other than sizing a warp on a loom, I’m not familiar with any chemical treatments handspinners or weavers do to their yarns … except maybe water when spinning flax on its own.
While commerical yarns can teach me about blends, things like how fibres combined in certain ratios drape and behave in the fabric, they are still an investment compared to sampling a bunch of blends. In various ratios, I can do rapid fire sampling, knit some swatches and have a pretty good idea about how the yarn will handle both on the loom and needles (woven and knitted, respecitvely).
And somtimes, I just don’t want to prep and spin and ply and knit or weave! There is a simplicity in being able to focus on the pattern rather than the many choices that come ahead of time in the yarn creation. Neither is right or wrong, or even preferable, but for myself, I want to spend much of my time in the yarn creation stage – regardless of the time consuming nature of it.
Commerical yarn, for myself, often falls flat. There isn’t the story of creation that handspun holds – where the fibre came from, how it was prepared, what the fabric feels like now that it is finished. In comparison, the commerical yarn, for myself, is about the pattern that is chosen or how the final garment fits/feels. The story changes slightly. I enjoy that in various contexts – a recent knit from commerical yarn was a study in how the hand dyed yarn of the same colourway appeared quite different from the handspun yarn. It was neither about the fabric per se or the yarn itself but how colour changes depending on the application.
The experiment was to compare the above (Bramble Ridge Hand Dyed Yarns Haunui Fog in ‘Hastings Sunrise’) against the yarn dyed using the same colours (SW Merino + Nylon).
The Haunui Fog is an oatmeal base that is literally a slightly grey-beige colour and very subtle. The SW Merino + Nylon base is white because generally those yarns are bleached while prepping the fibre for spinning. Below is the yarn on the SW Merino + Nylon base:
But while the yarn was brighter and lighter, the colours are still comparable. The handspun never had the slgihtly confetti appearance but it never appeared that way on the braid so it would have been almost impossible to create that in the finished handspun yarn. Instead, with the grey, it gives a slightly variegated appearance that is very pleasing.
These are the projects that get me more excited about using commercial yarns. The yarn itself doesn’t call to me – but the comparison and learning does. Being able to place the two side-by-side is incredibly helpful for our understanding of how these yarns behave, knit and compare.
How does colour change when the base, application and spinning change? These are very difficult to visualize until they are seen side-by-side.
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