All the Gorgeous Yarns are carefully sourced with sustainability, luxurious quality and provenance in mind. This is so that you can buy our yarns with confidence for your projects; whether you are a knitter, crocheter or weaver, or a hand dyer.
Merino Wool
Merino wool is renowned for its fine, fibre quality and soft lustrous texture. It is not itchy, and is smooth and silky to wear, whether knitted, crocheted or woven into fabrics.
It is an ideal yarn where a hand knitted garment needs ‘’drape’’ and needs to be soft and fluid, such as a shawl or wrap, or anything near the neck. Longer, heavier garments may go out of shape as a result so Merino is often mixed with other natural fibres such as a small percentage of wool or silk to give the knitting yarn ‘’body’’ to hold stitches in shape. Merino can be used for lace patterns but it does not give good stitch definition so is better for larger lace patterns rather than intricate ones where the beauty is in the stitches.
Washing must be done carefully to limit the amount of stretch put on the garment by the weight of the washing water and handling. It should only be hand washed, and dried flat.
Blue Faced Leicester Sheep wool. (BFL)
The yarn spun form the Blue Face Leicester breed of sheep is becoming very popular with hand knitters. It is very light, with a demi-lustre which is thought to be the best of any native coloured sheep. It knits well, garments are comfortable to wear, with good stitch definition, and with gentle washing will last years. It is very suitable for indoor garments, and is sometimes blended with other yarns such as silk or cashmere for added softness and luxury.
It is often treated to be ‘’superwash’’ so can be washed in a machine though Gorgeous Yarns does not recommend this for any yarn. The BFL that is superwash has an OEKOTEX standard which means that every component of the process has been tested for harmful substances and that the superwash additive is not harmful to health.
Alpaca/Baby Alpaca
Most fibre from alpacas comes from Suri alpacas because the fleece is softer and silkier than those from Huacaya alpacas whose fleece is more wool like, however, both are softer than wool.
Alpaca has no ‘’memory’’, this means it doesn’t hold stitches well and is slippery to knit with. It also doesn’t crinkle when you knit with it and remains smooth and soft. It is ideal for garments where drape and softness are essential, such as wraps, cowls and snoods, it is very soft next to the skin and unlikely to cause irritation as it’s not itchy like wools can be.
Like merino wool, washing must be done carefully to limit the amount of stretch put on the garment by the weight of the washing water and handling. It should only be hand washed, and dried flat.
Silk
Silk is a protein fibre from the cocoons of specific moths, usually the Mulberry Silk Moth.
The fibres have a triangular structure which refracts light, making silk lustrous and glistening. When used in hand knitting silk yarn is usually smooth and cool to knit with and wear. It has no ‘’stretch’ and so can be hard to knit with as the tension of the knitted work may vary, but a garment knitted with silk is very beautiful and rewards the knitter with lovely feel, drape and colour quality.
Knitting with silk yarn can also feel dry and a bit squeaky, not great if you can’t bear pulling cotton wool apart! (it’s the same sort of feeling!)
Silk can be mixed with other luxury fibres such as alpaca, mohair and merino which makes it easier to use, and gives more structure to the yarn, whilst keeping its lustrous qualities.
Gorgeous Yarns recommends that silk garments are only hand washed, if possible gently smoothed into shape without pulling or stretching, and dried flat.