*Planted: 9 March 2025 | Last Tended: 9 March 2025* In order to understand how to create a textile that will ultimately be used to create a garment that you want, it’s important to understand the characteristics of yarn and how yarns are constructed. A mastery of [[🌿 On textile craftsmanship|textile craftsmanship]] depends on this understanding. ##### Fiber alignment along the yarn’s central axis There are two terms frequently used among today’s textile artists to describe the alignment of fibers within a yarn along the direction of the yarn’s central axis: **woolen** and **worsted**. These terms come from yarn and weaving production processes in England specifically, and while most North-American-centric textile artists use them (and in an binary way) to describe a yarn’s main characteristic, it’s important to understand that the terms and their binary usage don’t reflect the wide variety of fiber preparation techniques used in other cultures around the world and the results of that preparation and how it’s used — for example, in South America where fiber is typically prepped for spinning without the use of cards or combs. I’ll use these terms as a convenient way to describe the two end points of a spectrum: whether the yarn’s fibers are aligned along the central axis, or whether there’s no intentional alignment along that axis at all. ![[Pasted image 20250309110941.jpg]] The term **worsted** comes from the preparation technique developed in the town of Worstead, England in the 12th century that produced long, strong fibers with little air trapped between then and aligned along the yarn’s central axis, creating a strong yarn suitable for a dense weave. In the European tradition of fiber preparation this is typically achieved by using combs, which contain long metal tines that comb out the short, weaker fibers and leave the stronger long fibers, and then by using a spinning technique from this preparation that preserves the direction of the fibers. The term **woolen** comes from the Old English word for wool (“wull”), and means fibers that are in a more natural disarray, creating more air space between the fibers. This creates a lighter and airier fiber, and is generally warmer due to the air trapped by the fibers. In the European tradition of fiber preparation this is usually achieved through the use of cards: two flat pieces of wood with handles that contain a sheet of small metal hooks that resemble hair or dog brushes. This preparation can be used with a spinning technique that preserves the fluffiness of the fiber to produce a lightweight and airy yarn. Using combinations of these techniques, it’s possible to produce hybrid yarn preparations that fall on a spectrum depending on which techniques are used. In this image I made, the horizontal axis represents the way the fiber was prepared (using the terms above), and the vertical axis represents choices made in the spinning of the fiber, both in terms of speed and spindle weight and type. ![[IMG_3372.jpeg]] *Sources*: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worsted