Types of Knitting Wool

When you starting knitting, one of the things you are going to have to do is to select the most appropriate knitting wool for your project.

Types of Wool

There are basically two main types of wool or yarn that you can use for knitting, natural fibres and synthetic or man-made fibres.

Each type of yarn has it's benefits and drawbacks and the type of yarn you choose will vary depending on what you intend to use it for.

Natural fibres used for hand knitting include:

• Sheep's Wool
• Alpaca
• Cashmere
• Mohair
• Cotton
• Silk
• Angora
• or a mix of natural fibres

Man-made fibres include:

• Nylon or
• Acrylic

Of course there are also a number of different yarns available that are a mix of both natural and man-made fibres!

Hand Knitting Yarn Plys

In Australia, commercially made knitting yarn is classified into plys, which basically tell you the relative thickness of the yarn. If you would like to know more about each of the plys and what they are generally used for, just click on any of the links below.

• 1 ply (Superfine)
• 2 ply (Fine)
• 3 ply (Baby Weight/Lace)
• 4 ply (Fingering)
• 8 ply (Double Knit)
• 10 ply (Worsted)
• 12 ply (Triple Knit or Aran)
• 14 Ply (Chunky)
• 16 Ply (Bulky)

Caring for Your Wool

One of the reasons many people are reluctant to use natural fibres for their knitting is the perceived difficulty in washing their garments.

Would you like to know the secret of safely washing wool? It is not as hard as you might think!

What about recycling your wool? Would you like to be able to reuse the wool from a garment that is too small, too big or out of style?

Handspun Yarns

And then there is handspun yarn.

Because of it's very nature handspun yarn does not come in a standard size or ply like commercial yarn does, and you need to do a bit of playing around to work out the equivalent ply size.

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