Description
I created this glorious blend of BFL wool top for spinning and bio-nylon for the eco-conscious crafter looking for a fibre sturdy enough for making sock yarn, yet is also fully compostable.
This blend is also fantastic for felting and you shouldn’t notice a difference in the felting time, but do sample to check for shrinkage rates.
I hand dyed this wool top in happy shades of neon yellow, aqua blue, some pinkish reds and a deep blue for contrast. The resulting combination of these colours also created new ones such as a bit of orange and hints of yellow-green, for extra fun! Together these colours are a feast for the eyes, hence the name Riot for this colourway.
There is a total of 100 grams (or 3.5 ounces) of woolly goodness for you to play with as you wish.
About BFL wool and bio-nylon
Blue Faced Leicester (or BFL for short) is an amazing wool for spinning and felting. It’s soft like Merino but it’s shinier because it has a longer staple length. It’s extremely suited for beginner spinners and a joy to use for experienced ones as well. It’s a great fibre for next-to-skin projects.
Bio-nylon is a wonderful replacement for regular nylon. Like the regular artificial fibre, it lends extra strength to the wool (perfect for making yarn suitable for socks or other harder wearing garments) but it doesn’t stay in the world forever. Bio-nylon will act as regular nylon for as long as want it to, but once you feel the fibre has run its course, you can pop it in the composting pile and it’ll start decomposing back into the soil. The best of two worlds.
Is this fibre a wool top or a roving?
I hope you think this is a good question, because there is definitely a difference between combed wool top and roving. Both expressions are often used to represent the same item, but they are quite different. In fact, I am inserting this explanation here so I can use the expression “wool roving” correctly and still please the search algorithm gods. Sneaky.
Combed wool top such as this are processed in the mill to remove the short fibre staples, and all the longer remaining fibres have been combed to face the same direction.
Wool roving, on the other hand, still retains some shorter fibres and not all face the same direction, so it will have a fuzzier appearance.
Both are fantastic types of fibre processing, they’re just different.
Disclaimers
I’ve done my very best to ensure colours show true, but please bear in mind your monitor settings might differ from mine.
The spindle depicted in one of the photos is for decoration only and not part of the listing sale.
