How to choose the right yarn for your projects by ARNE & CARLOS

[Music] hi everybody welcome back uh these are your hosts arne and carlos and we're here with another tutorial this week today i thought it could be interesting to talk about different kinds of yarns and how to choose the right yarn for the right project so hopefully we will be able to share our knowledge and give you some tips and advice so that you can make the right choices when you go to your young store so we're back here today and today we are going to be talking a little bit about yarn and a little bit of about yarn choices there is so much yarn out on the market and there's so many different qualities and there are so many different price points and sometimes it can be really difficult to know exactly what to buy what to choose and since arno and i have been working uh for many many years i mean originally as designers and as producers we had our own line of knitwear uh ten years ago and we were manufacturing um in south america and working a lot uh with different yarn qualities we thought we'd share a little bit about our experiences and our opinions and maybe this way you will be able to make better choices so yeah yeah so what's your favorite yeah my favorite your favorite kind of yarn on it i like pure wool you like pure wool yeah and so why do you like pure wool because it's when you do like chocolate thing like this the fair isle yes it's it's better i think it's it's it's easier to do color work yeah in pure wool if you do color work in alpaca it's harder because you can see the yarn through it yeah the other color you can see it shine through yeah and that's that's uh something we're going to explain to you the reason why uh wool is really good for fair isle knitting so the reason is that wool is actually a very light fiber it doesn't weigh much so you can get a lot of wool um in very little weight to put it that in that way and so when you're knitting fair isle or you're doing fair isle projects the lightness of the wool will create this very dense kind of pattern with no air in it so you can see that this is you can see that this is very nicely knitted and and there's really you can't really see through it now if you would have chosen a fiber like alpaca alpaca is very very heavy it's more it looks more like hair when you see the alpaca fiber while it's being manufactured and because it's a very flat fiber very very heavy fiber you know when you knit fair aisle it tends to kind of stretch and you tend to end up with something that looks like that when you kind of see everything through which is not very nice for fair isle like when we worked in the fashion industry we tried to make this kind of knitwear in alpaca but it really didn't work at all and especially in machine knitting because you're carrying the the other yarn all the time yeah and then you could see that color shining through your knit exactly and that's because it's alpaca and it's a different it's a different kind of yarn it comes from a different kind of animal and really the yarn looks like hair when it's when it's you know after it's been spun and washed it looks like yeah and we also met people who told us they've been knitting like for months on the on the piece in pure alpaca and then when they wear it for a few times it's sagging it's falling down it's getting bigger and bigger so we never knitted anything in pure alpine no we like the blend of alpaca and merino like the one we're wearing this is a blender yeah that's the blend and this is a blend yeah so basically we're not very big fans on 100 alpaca 100 alpaca 100 baby alpaca will be a very expensive yarn and it will be a very heavy yarn and things will start sagging after a while you cannot use it for fair isle because it will stretch and you will see through it so never go for a 100 alpaca uh yarn if you're going to do a fair isle piece you spend a lot of time knitting and then you will be so disappointed yeah when it all falls down exactly so a better option is a blend so uh look for a blend which has alpaca in it but which also has the wool because the lightness of the wool and the softness of the alpaca will create a really wonderful yarn to work with this one here is from rowan this is a merino now this is an alpaca merino blend it's called the alpaca soft dk it's 30 alpaca 70 wool super soft wool and you see you only need about 30 alpaca to create that softness that the alpaca yarn gives and then the 70 wool gives it the lightness now if you go down even you know to 20 alpaca 10 alpaca you will still get a really soft luxurious yarn so you do it doesn't necessarily mean that buying 100 alpaca because it's so expensive is the best the blends are actually way better and that's the same thing with cashmere um never try knitting a pair of socks in a you know super expensive super luxurious cashmere wool 100 cashmere because what's going to happen you're going to get the heel with a big hole within days of using it cashmere is not a very sturdy fiber it's actually very delicate and it pills as well very easily i'm not a big fan of 100 cashmere either and cashmere is actually even more expensive than alpaca so what you want to look for is a yarn blend that has a little bit of cashmere and you don't even need to go to 30 cashmere 10 cashmere and 90 percent wool will give you a fantastically luxurious yarn but then again a lot a lot of the merino wool today is so soft and it's so nice yeah so it's exactly hard to feel the difference between the mix of marino and the pure milk yeah you're right because it's it's so good yeah there's a lot of there's a lot of great uh merino yarns on the market now 100 merinos that are really good very high quality very durable they have the lightness and they have the softness now this particular merino is uh is from shahen meier and this one is also spinned into a certain or the yarn is done in a certain way as you can see it's very tightly wrapped around like this and it is because of peeling the more the more the yarn is kind of wrapped up like that the less it will peel and yes these luxurious yarns merinos alpacas cashmeres they pill this is something that comes because of the softness there is really no way around it but the way that they're spun does help a lot with pilling so uh not for me everything peels on me yeah well you are always you're always moving i'm around so but yeah i mean if you if you want to go for if you want to go for yarns that don't peel you need to choose coarser yarns which we will talk about uh later but these these yarns will peel uh and this one of course will peel a little bit less because it's so tightly wrapped like it is um and i'm going to show you an experiment as well because the way you knit a lot of americans and british they throw and then when you throw you're actually moving the yarn around or if you do it the german way where you when you do you control your tension by doing something like this or the other way on your finger like this yeah and then you you unwrap it yeah because you're doing this if you leave the yarn on your finger it doesn't unwrap it and it's the same when you throw when you're throwing the yarn make sure make sure that you don't open it like that but the more you twist the yarn untwist untwist the yarn the more the pilling and it's easy to break yeah i'll show you i'll show you something that we learned which is very simple now this is the twist of the yarn or the the way it's twisted so if i keep twisting it in the same direction like this keep twisting and if i try if i try to it's pretty hard isn't it and the more you twist the harder it becomes but if i start unwrapping it the other way around like this it snaps just like that so remember that you are uh making the yarn weaker if you are unwrapping it like that while you're knitting so always make sure that you're knitting with a yarn and that it's well twisted the way it's supposed to do and don't that will avoid a lot of problems with peeling and also the fact that the yarn will be stronger for you to work with and we also know that a lot of people they prefer to knit with acrylics because it's cheaper but if you make a sweater on knitted from acrylic it's actually a sweater with better quality it's just a worse quality worse quality so if you're going to make a sweater use something that is it doesn't have to be expensive but it has to be a good quality because then it can stay in your family forever yeah and i think i would be more partial to finding a blend that has that can have some acrylic but that also has a little bit of wool in it so you get a little bit of the natural fiber i would go for something like that more than a 100 acrylic and then of course there is a big difference between acrylic and acrylic there are some very bad acrylics and then there's a lot of other acrylics which are better so again quality wise the spectre is very very very big usually we say that you should get the yarn the best possible yard that you can afford that's a good way to go uh so whatever you know if you have a budget for your yarn get the best yarn you can get the best quality yarn you can get for that budget that's a great way especially for clothing especially for clothing if you need christmas balls or toys you can use anything yeah if you need a christmas ball you can just you know use a cheap yarn because you're just putting it up on the tree and then taking it down again and you're not going to be using it it's not going to be like that sweater that you want it to be that heirloom that you want to pass down to your to your you know kids and to their kids you use a lot of time knitting it and time is money exactly and then of course we come to the courser wool qualities norway is a knitting country we have great quality wool in norway it's very coarse iceland has as well the loopy yarns these yarns can be a little bit itchy but then again on the other hand if you knit a sweater using this that kind of a yarn those sweaters tend to last forever they don't peel and they on me get peeled well no but i mean the really good quality of course the good one will never peel they are really really good quality yarns so you kind of you have to choose you know you can't get a very good quality uh sweater that doesn't scratch and that doesn't peel so either you're gonna get a little bit of the scratchy or you're gonna get a little bit of the pilling but you're never going to get the perfect yarn because that doesn't exist there's always going to be some pilling and if there's not peeling there's going to be the issue that the yarn is coarser and sometimes if you knit something in the traditional norwegian yarn you will get surprised when you steam it or after you washed it because it's very coarse when you when you get the ball and you you touch it it's coarse but it's soften up as soon as you steam it or wash it you changed a lot yeah so you can it can be surprising exactly so always think of the finishing touches when you're buying a yarn and thinking about you know asking the people in the store what will happen with this yarn when i when i finish my project and when i steam it when i put some hot iron with steam in it what's going to happen to it and you know there can be things elements or things that will change that you need to know that's a good thing with stores because you can get help yeah you can buy your yarn in the yarn store instead of ordering nothing on the internet it's good for advice yeah now i think we should talk a little bit about cotton i love cotton and these this is one of our favorite yarns to crochet with it's the catania from shahen meijer and this is really really it's a great color range huge color range and a great a great yarn i mean great quality it's very strong this is completely unbreakable no matter how much you twist it you can't break this yarn you need to cut it always and cotton is very special because sometimes the fiber feels like it's alive you know you'll knit yourself a cotton garment and you wear it two or three times and you're going to see if it's 100 cotton that it starts to expand and after you've worn it for a while you'll see the the the cups are going to be expanding and it's going to be growing so the only way that i know of to get it back in shape is to put it in the washing machine if it's a machine washable yarn you wash it and then it shrinks again and then once you start wearing it it expands again usually when we were working with the cotton yarns in peru when we were doing manufacturing we talked a little bit about the yarn having a memory and cotton does not have a memory it kind of tends to forget how it's supposed to be and a good way to uh to change that is by selecting blends with other kinds of yarns so for example you have a cotton yarn 100 cotton yarn which has no memory and which will expand but do say a 50 cotton 50 wool or 50 merino for example and you'll start getting a yarn that will combine the great qualities of two different yarns this is this has great memory because it's merino it's got great memory um you can also do a blend say of cotton with alpaca you get a very soft luxurious yarn with a little bit of memory um and then of course you can combine cotton with other things bamboo viscose you can combine it with uh modal yeah many different things that you can combine it with to give it a little bit of memory and of course i mentioned viscose and i mentioned bamboo and please know that bamboo is viscose bamboo is a tree this coast is made out of cellulose from trees they're both from the same family they're both the same and so that's basically it viscose and cotton make a great combination for a little bit of memory um and i personally i love catania for crocheting and i think that when you crochet because you're crocheting and you're twisting the yarn you're making you're doing your single crochets you're doing your double crochets you're doing your all your different um stitches in crochet you're actually strengthening the yarn even more by twisting it all the time and i think that really helps uh when you're doing crochet because it keeps the the the fabric that you're crocheting more sturdy as when knitting because knitting is more elastic you will get that thing where it expands but still cotton is a great yarn so those are a few of our tips i think the bottom line the most important thing is an expensive yarn doesn't necessarily have to be the best yarn an expensive cashmere yarn 100 cashmere or alpaca is definitely not better than a less expensive merino yarn and combinations of different blends have different qualities and just think about the great things you love about two different yards and look for those combinations in one yard and i think it's much better to spend less money on a really good quality yarn which has a little bit of touch of luxury than to buy something very expensive and luxurious that will probably wear out at one point or another and actually rather sooner than later so these are a few of our tips these are a few of the things that we like and these are some of the things that we've picked up you know from experience in the industry and i'm sure that you all have your own favorite kinds of yarns and your favorite kinds of blends and we would love to hear about it so if you have things that you feel we should know about just uh put some of those comments uh in our comment field down below here let us know let us know we're open for to find out new things about this wonderful world of fibers and wolves so uh this is it for this week and we look forward to seeing you again next week bye [Music]

Channel: ARNE & CARLOS

Views: 100,659

Keywords: arne y carlos, arne og carlos, arne und carlos, arne and carlos, ARNE & CARLOS, ARNE, CARLOS, knit, how to knit, learn to knit, knitting tutorial, knitting tutorials, lifestyle, how to, how to crochet, crochet for beginners, crochet ABC, knitting ABC, valdres, etnedal, norway, How to choose the right yarn for your projects by ARNE & CARLOS, arne el carlos, arne en carlos, choose wool, yarn, choose right yarn, choosing yarn

Id: mkSQX75gc4Q

Length: 17min 48sec (1068 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 15 2017