This Saturday, lets talk about yarn that is sourced from the renewable Bamboo tree native to the Asian continent. This is the second plant-based fibre I am talking about, after cotton. This super strong but super cozy yarn is made with bamboo grass that is harvested and distilled into cellulose, and then spun into yarn. In a way, it’s a bit like how paper is made. Swipe to see a detailed infographic on how bamboo yarn can be made from scratch. If you have school going kids interested in STEM, do check it out. For more information, you can also visit https://bamboodetective.com/how-is-bamboo-fabric-made/ https://ukhandknitting.wordpress.com/2016/09/15/know-your-yarn-bamboo/ https://www.thesprucecrafts.com/knitting-with-bamboo-yarn-2117304 Bamboo sourced yarn is environmentally friendly, because bamboo by nature is a renewable resource. One does […]
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Cotton
Cotton yarn is one of my favourite yarns to work with. It dyes well and knits up into easy-to-wear fabric that most people find comfortable against their skin. Maintenance is easy, and it gets softer with use. Knitting with cotton however has a major pitfall – though it shows the stitch pattern very well, errors are also clearly visible. Some people also find it stiff to work with, I mean, certainly it can’t beat the softness of Angora or Merino, but adding a soft fibre with it can solve that problem. The extremely detailed infographic on how cotton is transformed from something grown on a farm to something worn by us is from Cotton Australia. If you have school going […]
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Silk
Silk is an animal protein fibre produced by certain insects and arachnids as building material for cocoons and webs. When this is done in captivity to make fine fabrics, it is called sericulture. The origin of producing and weaving silk by humans is clouded in mystery, though it is universally accepted that it did begin in China around the middle of 3rd century BC. By 2nd century CE, India was producing silk and exporting it to Persia. Though it was an Asian supersecret, eventually the whole industry went ‘viral’ and now we can find silk literally everywhere. Around 1865, Louis Pasteur worked extensively with silkworms to understand the problem of infectious diseases, especially that of silkworm disease. He was able to save silkworms by preserving their […]
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Merino
Merino. We know of this yarn in India, and it is synonymous with warm winter wear that we would buy if we were going to a trip to the North, or abroad. Or sometimes as blends in our socks. But what is Merino? It is actually the name of the breed of sheep, first spoken about in the 12th century in Morocco. The Spaniards then found this sheep, crossbred them with their ewes, and monopolised the trade of wool to develop their country economically in the 15th and 16th century. Intensive selective crossbreeding and breed refinement over the ages has today led to the production of the softest and finest wool of any of the 200 odd breeds of sheep. […]
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