A Little Textile Science

 

plastic bin with The Intentional Spinner and three different yarns

After the burn test

In my continued effort to weave down my stash I have reached the 'mystery yarn' stage of trying to use up things.

I'm nearly done with the 2/16 cotton - two more towels to weave on the current warp, then one more warp which will effectively use up the natural, and then as much of the 16/2 teal as I can weave into that warp.  Rather than buy yet more 2/16 cotton, I dug into my 'small' stash of 2/20 mercerized cotton.  

Over the past couple of weeks I emptied three (small) boxes, collected tubes into compatible (I hope) groupings sufficient to make warps (added in other yarns to make up the numbers in order to sectionally beam them) and started pulling potential wefts.

As I dug through it became obvious that I have accumulated some 'mystery' yarns and I really didn't have any idea of what they are.

One was supposed to be linen, but it looked and felt different from my other linens.  Which, admittedly, aren't the very top quality.  So I examined the mystery yarn and a known linen under my digital microscope and the mystery yarn looked very similar but has much finer fibres than the known linen.

I also found a large cone (kilo) of a very fine yarn that looked like maybe it might be some sort of cellulose, but I couldn't tell for sure.

So yesterday I collected my book (one of them) with a burn chart in it, the known linen and the two mystery yarns, plus a barbeque lighter and carried them all outside.

Some fibres stink when they burn and I didn't want that in the house, plus open flame.  Much better to do burn tests out of doors.

#1 was the potential linen.  It burned with an orange flame and sparked.  A lot!  Continued burning when pulled from the flame and then the slight breeze blew the flame out.  The residue was black with fine strands of a greyish white.  What burned was pretty much consumed entirely.

#2 retreated from the flame, and never really caught on fire.  Black beads formed.  And it stank.

#3 (the known linen) burned readily like #1, sparked, what burned burned thoroughly.

All three samples were about the same length and it is easy to see in the photo that #2 really didn't burn.

One of the reasons for the difference between 1 and 3 may be because the individual fibres are much finer in #1 and they have been twisted (single and ply) much more tightly than #3.  But I think I can say that #1 is linen.  

Reading through the burn chart, I think I can say that #2 is nylon.  As such I will not be using it as weft for tea towels.  What will I use it for?  Perhaps nothing.  It may go directly into the recycle bin.  Since it is nylon, I won't toss it into the trash because it won't degrade any time soon.  Someone who wants nylon, maybe for strengthening heels/toes in socks might find it useful.

Burn charts are readily available.  They might not tell definitively what a mystery yarn is, but they can give enough information to use them - or not - for the intended purpose.

Never stop asking questions.  Never stop trying to find out answers!