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Worsted and woollen wool

Dobromira Kuneva
Mar 18, 2015
2 min read

WOOLEN YARN

Almost any spinable fibre can be processed on the woolen system. The starting material is usually compressed bales of washed and sorted raw wool, recovered wool or another fibres. The material is taken from the bales in layers and fed to a carding willow for opening.

Woolen yarn is handspun using thelong drawtechnique, and the yarn is spun from ar olag and thus ending up with a mix. The first step to spin a true woolen yarn, however, is to card the fiber into a rolag using hand carders. The rolag is spun without much stretching of the fibers from the cylindricalconfiguration. This is done by allowing twist into a short section of the rolag, and then pulling back, without letting the rolag change position in your hands, until the yarn is the desiredthickness. The twist will concentrate in the thinnest part of the roving, thus when the yarn is pulled, the thicker sections with less twist will tend to thin out. Once the yarn is the desiredthickness, enough twist is added to make the yarn strong. Then the yarn is wound onto the bobbin, and the process starts again.

WORSTED YARN

The worsted system is used to produce smooth, uniform yarns from the longer types of wool fibres. The raw wool is first prepared at the top-makers where it is washed, combed, and formed into a sliver.

Worsted is spun from a combed fiber preparation. Combing removes the short fibers from the locks, leaving a preparation, which has fibers of very similar staple lengths, and it prepares the fibers by aligning them so that they are strictly parallel to each other. The spinning method is either short backwards or short forward draw. The yarn is firm, strong andsmooth with low loft, low elasticity, and it is not fuzzy. Worsted yarns are spun from longstapled fibers - over 4", though some authors say over 3". The yarns are sometimes called"summer weight wools" because worsteds are cooler to wear than woolens.