Talk:Woolen

Making a woolen yarn

I'm pretty sure that for a woolen yarn the fiber should be in a rolag to spin. The fibers in a roving are going the wrong way (along the roving/yarn), and thus one can't trap as much air. One can make a yarn that is still bulky, but it is almost always going to be low twist, which is not the case with a worsted yarn. Loggie 15:16, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

i think you're right about needing a rolag to make woolen yarn but i don't get what you mean about the low twist part. i'm fairly new to spinning, so it could very well be i just don't know yet ;) but isn't a low twist yarn inherently going to have more trapped air in it, a woolen quality, than a high twist yarn? Andreach 08:05, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

It will have more air, which is a woolen quality, but it won't be a completely woolen yarn. I haven't spun woolen yarn much (only samples to be honest) but I've seen plied woolen yarns that were balanced and wrapped around each other (bother me, I can't remember the official terminology) often, and still were very bouncy and full of air. A worsted yarn couldnt be that bouncy and tightly plied as well, I think. Loggie 17:37, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Woollen and worsted

1. I thought that the correct spelling was 'woollen', but that word redirects to wool.
2. My reading suggests that woollen yarn was made by caring short-staple wool, whereas worsted yarn was made by combing long-staple wool. I suspect that the terminology has become confused in modern times due to the substitution of artificial fibres. Is there some one out there who can throw light on this subject? Furthermore there seems to be confusion over the nature of stuff. Peterkingiron 22:26, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

I just looked up woolen in the OED, and the OED says that woolen is the US spelling of woollen, for what it is worth. You are right about woolen and worsted definitions- a pure woolen yarn is made from short fibers carded into a rolag with handcards and then spun using the woolen technique, and a pure worsted is made from longer fibers that have been combed and then spun with either the long or short draw technique. The problem is that a yarn is seldom a pure woolen or a pure worsted. Often a spinner will mix together the two techniques to get some qualities of each yarn. I come at this from a handspinning background, and I often spin using worsted techniques and a woolen preperation. Loggie 22:51, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I have added the otehr spelling and will now change the redirect for Woollen. Peterkingiron 22:02, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Spelling

The question of spelling on this page was reasonably well settled in 2007, but it has become unstable in 2009. The page is called "Woolen", but fanciers of British spelling have been changing most of the instances of the word on the page to "woollen", including the title of an American web site so that it doesn't match the web site. The addition of Canadian English spelling has also been deleted as part of this battle. This is rather silly, and I'm about to revert the most recent such change. Nadiatalent (talk) 16:26, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

P.S. Some of the instability is actually on the Cedar page, rather than here. Nadiatalent (talk) 16:35, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Not so much spelling as meaning in this query: the header seems to be treating “woolen”/ "woollen” as a noun, when to me (and the dictionary search I have done) they are adjectives. To me the noun would be “wool” - in British English at least you would talk about “wool” being knitted into a ”woollen pullover”; that garment might be referred to as “a winter woollen”, part of the set of objects made of wool, but the “ingredient” used to make it wouldn’t be called “woollen”, unless it was to describe the yarn - to show it isn’t acrylic, or cotton. Is this wrong? Jock123 (talk) 20:52, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

Wiktionary agrees with you. I've moved the wiktionary entry to the top of the page. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 16:34, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

The wool textile industry in Great Britain

Welcome to new editors. This is a very big topic- one that I left untouched as the other interested editors came from a handicraft background and my interest is industrial. I have at my side ISBN 0710069790 it has been digitised and can be found: https://openlibrary.org/books/OL5334739M/The_Wool_textile_industry_in_Great_Britain though this involves registration. There are 310 pages- or seventeen academic papers. There are so many areas producing woollens, kerseys and Worsteds- we look to West Yorkshire, Costwolds, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and then Wales(and of course in the Welsh speaking areas). Wool built the mediaeval lowland economy. This is a far bigger than knitting needles. Any help needed- just ask here.--ClemRutter (talk) 09:13, 19 April 2021 (UTC)