I Can’t Sleep - Yarn | Gentle Bedtime Reading for Sleep

Episode Date: May 31, 2019

Relax with calm bedtime reading about yarn to ease insomnia and sleepless nights. This soothing episode explores the history, types, and uses of yarn, from ancient hand-spun fibers to modern textile production. Benjamin’s peaceful cadence turns the story of wool, cotton, and synthetic threads into a calming journey of learning. With no whispering or hypnosis—just calm, fact-filled storytelling—you’ll find your mind settling, stress easing, and rest arriving naturally. Press play, imagine the gentle weaving of yarn, and drift peacefully into sleep. Want More? Request a Topic: https://www.icantsleeppodcast.com/request-a-topic Ad-Free Episodes: https://icantsleep.supportingcast.fm/ Shop Sleep-Friendly Products: https://www.icantsleeppodcast.com/sponsors Join the Discussion on Discord: https://discord.gg/myhGhVUhn7 This content is derived from the Wikipedia article on Yarn, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) license. Read the full article: Wikipedia – Yarn. Happy sleeping! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to a Glassbox media podcast. What if I told you that most of the modern day self-help advice you've been hearing could actually make you worse? The key to a better life isn't about feel-good gimmicks that sound catchy. The Mentally Stronger Podcast gives you access to a licensed therapist who shares science-backed tools that will actually change your life. Hi, I'm Amy Morin, psychotherapist, mental strength trainer, and international best-selling author. In each episode, we cover research-back strategies, like how to stop relying on willpower and start creating habits for lasting change. And the five mental strength-building exercises you can do from your couch. I also speak to world-class experts like Dr. Nicole Kane, who shares how to permanently heal anxiety by addressing the root cause.

With over 200 episodes in our catalog, this podcast is for you if you're ready to crush self-doubt, conquer challenges, and become stronger than ever with therapist-approved strategies that can change your life. Listen to Mentally Stronger with therapist Amy Morin, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the I Can't Sleep podcast, where I read random articles to bore you to sleep with my soothing voice. I'm your host, Benjamin Boster. This episode is from a Wikipedia article called Yarn. Yarn is a long, continuous length of interlocked fibers, suitable for use in the production of textiles,

sewing, crocheting, knitting, weaving, embroidery, or rope-making. Thread is a type of yarn intended for sewing by hand or machine. Modern manufactured sewing threads may be finished with wax or other lubricants to withstand the stresses involved in sewing. Embroitery threads are yarn specifically designed for needlework. Etymology The word yarn comes from Middle English, from the Old English, Yern, akin to old high

Germans, garn, yarn, Greeks, chur de, string, and Sanskrit's, hira band. Materials. Yarn can be made from a number of natural or synthetic fibers. Many types of yarn are made differently, though. There are two main types of yarn, spun and fibrins. filaments. Fibers. The most common plant fiber is cotton, which is typically spun into fine yarn for mechanical weaving or knitting into cloth. Cotton and polyester are the most commonly spun fibers in the world. Cotton is grown throughout the world. After harvesting, it is ginned and prepared

for yarn spinning. Polyester is extruded from polymers derived from natural gas and oil. Synthetic fibers are generally extruded in continuous strands of gel-state materials. These strands are drawn, stretched, annealed, hardened, and cured to obtain properties desirable for later processing. Synthetic fibers come in three basic forms, staple, toe, and filament. Staple is cut fibers, generally sold in lengths up to 120 millimeters.

Toe is a continuous rope of fibers consisting of many filaments loosely joined side to side. Filament is a continuous strength, consisting of anything from one filament to many. Synthetic fiber is most often measured in a weight per linear measurement basis, along with cut lengths. Denier and DETEX are the most common weight to length measures. Cut length only applies to staple fiber.

Filament extrusion is sometimes referred to as spinning, but most people equate spinning. with spun yarn production. The most commonly spun animal fiber is wool harvested from sheep. For hand knitting and hobby knitting, thick wool and acrylic yarns are frequently used. Other animal fibers used include alpaca, Angora, Moher, Lama, Kashmir, and silk.

More rarely, yarn may be spun from camel, yak, possum, musk ox, cat, dog, wolf, rabbit, or buffalo hair, and even turkey or ostrich feathers. Natural fibers such as these have the advantage of being slightly elastic and very breathable, while trapping a great deal of air, making for a fairly warm fabric. Other natural fibers that can be used for yarn include linen and cotton. These tend to be much less elastic and retain less warmth than the animal hair yarns, though they can be stronger in some cases. The finished product will also look rather different from the woolen yarns. Other plant fibers which can be spun include bamboo, hemp, corn, nettle, and soy fiber.

T-shirt yarn is a yarn made directly from T-shirts, and the fiber composition is determined by the material the T-shirt is made from. Comparison of material properties In general, natural fibers tend to require more careful hands, handling than synthetics because they can shrink, felt, stain, shed, fade, stretch, wrinkle, or be eaten by moths more readily. Unless special treatments such as mercerization or superwashing are performed to strengthen, fix color, or otherwise enhance the fiber's own properties.

Protein yarns, i.e. hair, silk, feathers. may also be irritating to some people, causing contact dermatitis, hives, wheezing, or other reactions. Plant fibers tend to be better tolerated by people with sensitivities to the protein yarns, and allergists may suggest using them or synthetics instead to prevent symptoms. Some people find that they can tolerate organically grown and processed versions of protein fibers, possibly because organic processing standards preclude the use of chemicals that may irritate the skin. When natural hair type fibers are burned, they tend to singe and have a smell of burnt hair.

This is because many, as human hair, are protein-derived. Cotton and viscous rayon yarns burn as a wick. Synthetic yarns generally tend to melt, though some synthetics are inherently flame-retardant. Knowing how an unidentified fiber strand burns and smells can assist in determining if it is natural or synthetic and what the fiber content is. both synthetic and natural yarns can pill. Pilling is a function of fiber content, spinning method, twist, contiguous staple length, and fabric construction. Single-ply yarns or using fibers like merino wool are known to pill more due to the fact

that in the former, the single-ply is not tied enough. to securely retain all the fibers under abrasion. And the marino wool's short staple length allows the ends of the fibers to pop out of the twist more easily. Yarns combining synthetic and natural fibers inherit the properties of each parent according to the proportional composition. Synthetics are added to lower cost,

increased durability, and unusual color or visual effects provide machine washability and stain resistance, reduce heat retention, or lighten garment weight. Spun yarn is made by twisting staple fibers together to make a cohesive thread or single. Twisting fibers into yarn in the process called spinning can be dated back to the upper Paleolithic.

and yarn spinning was one of the very first processes to be industrialized. Spun yarns may contain a single type of fiber or be a blend of various types. Combining synthetic fibers, which can have high strength, luster, and fire-retardant qualities, with natural fibers, which have good water absorbency and skin comforting qualities, is very common. The most widely used blends are cotton polyester and wool acrylic fiber blends. Blends of different natural fibers are common too, especially with more expensive fibers such as alpaca, angora, and cashmere.

Yarn is selected for different textiles based on the characteristics of the yarn fibers, such as warmth, wool, lightweight, cotton, or rayon, durability, nylon is added to sock yarn, for example, or softness, cashmere alpaca. Yarn is composed of twisted strands of fiber, which are known as plies when grouped together. These strands of yarn are twisted together, plied, in the opposite direction to make a a thicker yarn. Depending on the direction of this final twist, the yarn will have either S-twist, the threads appear to go up to the left, or Z-twist to the right. For a single-ply yarn, the direction of the final twist is the same as its original twist. The twist direction of yarn can affect the final properties of the fabric, and combined use of the two-twist

directions can nullify skewing and knitted fabric. The mechanical integrity of yarn is derived from frictional contacts between its composing fibers. The science behind this was first studied by Galileo. Filament yarn consists of filament fibers, very long continuous fibers, either twisted together or only grouped together. Thicker monofilaments are typically used for industrial purposes rather than fabric production or decoration. Silk is a natural filament, and synthetic filament yarns are used to produce silk-like effects. Texturized yarns are made by a process of air-texturizing filament yarns, sometimes referred to as tasselinizing, which combines multiple filament yarns,

into a yarn with some of the characteristics of spun yarns. Slub effect means a yarn with thick and thin sections alternating regularly or irregularly. Color. Yarn may be used undyed or may be colored with natural or artificial dyes. Most yarns have a single uniform hue, but there is also a wide selection of variegated yarns. heathered or tweed, yarn with flex of different colored fiber. Ombra. Variegated yarn with light and dark shades of a single hue.

Multicolored, variegated yarn with two or more distinct hues. A parrot colorway might have green, yellow, and red. Self-striping. yarn dyed with lengths of color that will automatically create stripes in a knitted or crocheted object marled yarn made from strands of different colored yarn twisted together sometimes in closely related hues yarn quantities for handcrafts are usually measured and sold by weight in ounces or grams include 25 grams, 50 grams, and 100 grams skeins. Some companies also primarily measure in ounces with common sizes being 3 ounce, 4 ounce, 6 ounce, and 8 ounce skeins. Textile measurements

are taken at a standard temperature and humidity because fibers can absorb moisture from the air. The actual length of the yarn contained in a ball or skein can vary due to the inherent heaviness of the fiber and thickness of the strand. For instance, a 50-gram skein of lace weight mohair may contain several hundred meters, while a 50-gram skein of bulky wool may contain only 60 meters. There are several thicknesses of craft yarn, also referred to as weight. This is not to be confused with the measurement and or weight listed above. The Craft Yarn Council of America is making an effort to promote a standardized industry system for measuring this, numbering the weights from one finest to six heaviest.

Some of the names for the various weights of yarn from finest to thickest are called lace, fingering, sport, double knit, or decay, worsted, erin, or heavy worsted, bulky, and super bulky. This naming convention is more descriptive than precise. fiber artists disagree about where on the continuum each lies and the precise relationships between the sizes. Another measurement of yarn weight, often used by weavers, is wraps per inch, WPI. The yarn is wrapped snugly around a ruler, and the number of wraps that fit in an inch are counted.

labels on yarn for handicrafts often include information on gauge, known in the UK as tension, which is a measurement of how many stitches and rows are produced per inch or per centimeter on a specified size of knitting needle or crochet hook. The proposed standardization uses a 4x4 inch 10 by 10 centimeter knitted or crocheted square, with the resultant number of stitches across and rows high made by the suggested tools on the label to determine the gauge. In Europe, textile engineers often use the unit tex, which is the weight in grams of a kilometer of yarn, or desatex, which is a finer measurement corresponding to the weight in grams of 10 kilometers of yarn.

Many other units have been used over time by different industries.