Thursday, October 11, 2012

A Lesson in Fiber Fineness

Fiber Lesson of the Day.

As you may have noticed from the All Hallow's Eve SAL and this weeks update in my shop "SuperFine Merino" is popping up in my batts. I am a sucker for soft fiber and when the opportunity presented itself for me to start using superfine merino I jumped on it. It will take a little while but I hope to transition over to 100% superfine merino as the base for my smooth batts. My guess is that it will happen by the end of this year.

Some of you may not be familiar with how fibers are counted/categorized so I thought you might like to hear more about the fibers I use and their fineness.

One way that fiber is categorized is by the Bradford Count. The other is by Micron (fiber diameter). You can see a table of how wools and other fibers compare here.

Here are the counts of what I currently use:
The bombyx silk that I use has a micron count of 13 and is 100s on the Bradford Count
The merino top that I use has a micron count of 21.5 and is 64s on the Bradford Count- putting it just at the bottom of the Fine Wool Category.

The new superfine merino that I am getting has a micron count of 19 and is 70s on the Bradford count- so it is softer than the other merino I have been using.

All of these fibers are next to the skin soft and are the highest quality I have been able to find. I'm hoping that you love the new superfine merino as much as I do. I welcome your feedback on them.

Today's smooth batt update.

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