Hi, I’m Kelsey. I’ve been knitting for 10 years and I’m a member of several knitting
organizations. I’m going to talk today about different types of yarn you can use for your
project. Many times when you have a pattern, it will specify a specific brand and type
of yarn to use, which by all means is good to follow. You also can substitute yarns.
There is a whole huge variety of different yarns you can use. I’m going to present
a very small sampling of them, but you should definitely go to your local yarn store and
touch things and ask questions and see what’s available to you. The most common and most
well-known type of yarn is going to be wool. Wool comes from a sheep, it’s pretty simple,
Its very warm. It can be scratchy, but it can also be very soft. It traps heat and moisture
very well. This is a little tweed sort of type here and if you look really closely you
can see that its made of two different strands of slightly different colors twisted together.
I’ll try to separate those for you. See like this. Each of those strands is called
a ply, and you can buy wool that’s one ply, that’s just one strand, two ply like this,
or even three ply. That changes the thickness and the strength of it. The ply’s can be
different colors or the same colors. And that’s wool. There is washable wool, but most wool
you have to wash by hand and be a little bit careful about the care of it because it can
shrink. This is a blend of wool and a synthetic material, so you can throw it in the washer
or throw it in the dryer which is kind of nice. The feel is not as nice as with real
wool, and the colors can often be not as nice. That’s a synthetic blend; there are also
pure synthetics such as a lot of the Red Heart, the kind you find at the five and dime that
are made of plastic. Those can also be very soft, but sometimes they’re a little bit
harsh to the touch and a little uncomfortable. They come in a huge range of colors, even
fluorescent and glow-in-the-dark which is kind of fun. This is another kind of blend
with wool and mohair which makes it extremely soft and gives it a little furry feeling there,
which is kind of a nice thing. There are all sorts of others. There’s cashmere yarn.
Angora is particularly nice; you can see how fuzzy that is. You can’t touch it on the
internet of course but it’s incredibly soft which is nice. There’s also cotton. Cotton
is really lightweight, and really nice if you’re making sort of a summer garment.
There are washing issues with it too. It also can be a little harsh on the skin and usually
less soft. There are very soft cottons though so that’s definitely not true of all cottons.
Another nice thing for lightweight summer garments is silk. It’s very expensive, much
more so than wool or cotton, but really kind of gorgeous. This is variegated, which means
it comes in different colors. Many yarns are like that, and this is variegated silk which
is very pretty. This is variegated wool; hand dyed which is really nice. The one’s I’ve
shown you so far have all been sort of a uniform thickness. You also can get yarn that comes
in different thicknesses. This is actually handspun by me, I spun it. But even a lot
of the yarns that you buy in the store will vary in thickness, and that gives a sort of
artsy fun uneven sort of texture to the yarn which can be nice. There are a whole bunch
of different kinds of synthetics and I can’t even get into all of them. There’s rayon,
but rayon might be natural. There’s polyester. This is actually a ribbon yarn. This is rayon,
and if you look there is actually a very fine thinly woven ribbon. It’s very loose and
drapey, and gives it almost an entirely different fabric than knitting with wool or with cotton
which is interesting. You have novelty yarns too which come in different textures. This
is chenille, which has a thread core with fibers sort of woven into that, which makes
it very fuzzy. It’s incredibly soft. This is a cotton chenille, but it comes in other
kinds of fabrics too like rayon. Then you have boucle, which is yarn that has little
bumps in it like this. You have this common thin cord and then you have bumps coming off
which makes a very fun fabric. It comes in different colors. This is another variation
of that, you’ve got furry loops coming off, which gives it a sort of fun fur look when
it’s knitted up. Those are some of the different materials you might use in a project. Again,
look at your pattern, and look at the type of garment you are trying to create. Go to
a local yarn store and touch things and feel things and see what would be the best for
what you’re working for.