Bloomers

Bloom is something that can be a good thing, or a bad thing.  In knitting, it's definitely a good thing.  Blooming is what they call what happens to a fiber the first time it's laundered after it's made into yarn.  Since this is fiber festival season, this is the time of year when you're most likely to be exposed to yarn in cones, or yarn that hasn't been processed to the point that it has bloomed.  Unbloomed yarn is usually a little cheaper than the same yarn post-bloom due to the step they skipped.

Unbloomed yarn is funny looking.  It's way too thin for the gauge it says it is.  It's extremely dense, making the hanks and cones very heavy.  And sometimes, it's hard to see the color characteristics.  If the yarn is marled, for example, it may not look that way before it has bloomed.

Fibers are shorn from the sheep, then cleaned, carded, plied, and spun.  Most of this is done by machine.  Sometimes there's a dye process involved, and that's also usually done by machine.  I've been in a variety of spinning mills, and although they all seem to handle the process a little bit differently, they all have one thing in common: the machines need to be oiled.

When the fibers are being carded and plied, they move through machinery.  The little fibers that float through the air can make a mess of the gears and belts and cards.  The way the yarn manufacturers manage to keep the fibers from gunking up the works is to treat the machinery with different lubricants at different rates.  As the fibers move through the process, they pick up minute traces of the oils and lubricants.

Here's the kicker.  Because all the fibers are passing through before they've been formed into plies, the oils get inside the yarns.  Each ply, now carrying a little lubricant, gets wound into yarn.  Different yarns have different numbers of plies, different size plies, and different amounts of twist per inch, but one thing remains true about all of them.  They all have machine oils in there.  Most commercial yarn manufacturers cleanse the yarn thoroughly, so this is really only a question in "boutique" yarns, and very small runs of colors or fibers.

This photo is of actual pre- and post-bloom yarn.  When you're at a fiber fest and you see yarn labeled as worsted, and to you it looks like DK or thinner, it's a good time to ask if the fiber has bloomed.  As you can see in the photo, the yarn may open up to more than twice the diameter it was before blooming.  After blooming, it will be softer, warmer, and it will lay better.  So has it bloomed?

What if the answer is "no"?  Loosely wind the yarn into a hank.  Bind the hank in several places with twist ties, or tie it with yarn.  Launder it according to the label directions, or wash it with Soak or Eucalan according to their directions.  Part of the washing thoroughly, of course, is rinsing thoroughly.  Then set the hank out to dry flat.  It may take a day or two, but it's worth it.  Knitting with your yarn before it blooms rarely creates a fiber as beautiful as knitting with it afterwards.

Yarns in Cones

When you're making a larger project like an afghan or  anywhere you'll need over 1200 yards of yarn, you're buying in bulk.  Why buy by the skein?  For many of us, there aren't any other options.  We can't buy by the cone.  Even if we could, hand-dyed rarely comes by the cone.  And when a yarn is very pricey (think Suri alpaca or cashmere) I usually want to buy as close to the exact amount of yarn I need as possible.  (I can't afford to have $50 worth of overage.)  Skeins make some sense.

But for some of us there is another option - cones.  Cones come in a variety of sizes, usually by weight, and are much cheaper than their skeined counterparts.  How much cheaper?  50 - 75%, and sometimes more.  Buying in cones means more time between shopping and knitting, because you've got some steps to make up.

In one local outlet (Daft Dames for Buffalo NY locals) there is a broad variety of coned yarns in every imaginable fiber, color and weight.  I asked one of the owners why the yarns, clearly of very high quality, are so much cheaper in cones.  She explained to me that coned yarns are two steps behind yarns you buy in skeins. 

In the process of making yarns by machine, the fibers are exposed to lubricants and oils that make the machines less likely to bind up.  (All those fibers that will one day become lint wreak havoc on gears and belts!)  When the machines finish making the particular yarn and it gets coned, it still needs to be washed and skeined. 

Skeining the yarn off, tying the skeins to keep them from opening into a tangle, and popping them in the wash is the first step to take when you get the yarn home.  Niddy Noddys, tools that have been around for hundreds years, are designed for the skeining part.  They are usually about 18 inches long, making each full wrap around the tool = 2 yards.  As you wind, you count, and you know how many yards you've skeined. Watch this video, and it will make sense.  http://youtu.be/c59tHHZ7ADg  Make enough skeins for your project, and wash them together, or in batches, so that you don't have to suspend your project every time you need to start a new skein.

Yarn pre- and post-bloom

The washing causes the yarn to "bloom".  Blooming is when the fiber returns to a state closer to its original state, but still stays made into yarn.  A coned yarn that looks like fingering can bloom to a Sport, DK, or even Worsted, depending on the fiber it's made from, and how it was manipulated in the yarn making process.  Blooming is a fluffing up, making the yarn springier, softer, and more able to trap air. 

How do you know what a yarn will be like after blooming?  Most places that carry coned yarns will have an example of each yarn knit up post-bloom.  No guesswork is required.

Each fiber and machining process is a little different, and it's always good to ask the staff at the shop what they recommend for cleaning the yarn for the blooming process.  If they don't have an answer, or you forget to ask, Soak, Woolite, and mild shampoo are all effective choices.  Remember a little goes a long way!

Hang your cleaned skeins over a towel rack or the shower rod to dry.  Rotate them a couple of times during drying to facilitate even blooming.  (Thorough drying may take as little as 12 hours or as many as 72, depending on skein size, temperature and humidity in your area.)

Post-drying, your yarn is ready for winding into a ball or a center-pull skein, just like a skein you would buy at the LYS.  Then you can begin your knitting project.  You've saved yourself a small fortune, and gotten to know your yarn just a little bit better before you start knitting.