Knitting Rules! Read Online Free PDF Page B

or metal tongs (again, not plastic). Fire can travel faster than you think.
    Ready? Get a piece of yarn, set a match to it, and watch closely.
    Even after you have set fire to things, it may not be so simple to tell the differences between them .
    Let’s take a closer look:
    â€¢ Cotton and linen burn similarly, but linen fibers are much longer than those of cotton. Pull out a few of the individual fibers and examine them. Are they long or short?
    â€¢ Man-made fibers shrink from the flame; all-natural fibers do not.
    â€¢ Rayon, because it’s made from wood pulp, acts more like a natural fiber than a man-made one. It won’t melt, but it will burn.

THE BURN TEST: FIBER BY FIBER
Wool
    Shrinks from the flame: No
    Smells like: Burning hair or feathers
    The flame: A small orange flame, difficult to keep burning; may simply smolder instead of burn
    Ignition: Doesn’t ignite quickly and the flame goes out if wool is removed from the fire
    What’s left behind: A gummy ash forms along the burning edge of the wool, but when it’s completely burned it leaves a crumbly ash
Cotton
    Shrinks from the flame: No
    Smells like: Burning paper
    The flame: Large and steady yellow or amber flame
    Ignition: Lights right away and will have a glowing ember that travels after the flame is blown out
    What’s left behind: Small amount of soft gray ash
Linen
    Shrinks from the flame: No
    Smells like: Burning grass
    The flame: Large and steady
    Ignition: Slower than cotton
    What’s left behind: Soft gray ash
Silk
    Shrinks from the flame: No
    Smells like: Burning hair
    The flame: Tiny flame
    Ignition: Burns slowly but is harder to put out than cotton or linen
    What’s left behind: A black shiny ash that crumbles
Acrylic
    Shrinks from the flame: Yes
    Smells like: Acrid or harsh odor
    The flame: A white-orange flame that burns quickly
    Ignition: Catches easily, will burn until extinguished
    What’s left behind: Hard ash
Nylon
    Shrinks from the flame: Yes
    Smells like: Burning plastic
    The flame: Flame has a blue base and orange tip
    Ignition: Melts, then burns
    What’s left behind: Hard ash
Rayon
    Shrinks from the flame: Yes
    Smells like: Burning leaves
    The flame: Orange
    Ignition: Lights and burns rapidly
    What’s left behind: Very little ash
THE BLEACH TEST
    If the burn test hasn’t helped you enough, try the bleach test. Put a small piece of the yarn in question in a dish of chlorine bleach, the kind you use for the laundry. Cotton and acrylic will stay put (though cotton will bleach white or yellow) but wool, silk, and other animal proteins (cashmere and alpaca, for example) will dissolve entirely in the bleach.
    The bleach test and its effect on wool are important to remember the next time you want to get a blueberry stain off a really nice wool sweater that took you four months to knit.
THE FELT-ABILITY TEST
    Wool (including mohair, alpaca, angora, and llama) felts, shrinks, and sticks to itself when you expose it to water, heat, and agitation. Silk, quiviut, and man-made fibers, on the other hand, do not. Take a length of the suspect yarn, squish it into a ball between your fingers, and then immerse it in hot soapy water. Squish, roll, and smoosh the yarn roughly for five minutes, then take it out and have a look. Try to pull apart your little ball. Is the yarn sticking to itself? Has it shrunk a little or begun to cling into a ball shape? If so, you probably have wool. If the yarn is still yarn, showing absolutely no inclination to stick to itself, you likely have acrylic, cotton, silk, a man-made fiber of another sort, or a superwash wool.
    Superwash wool is wool that has been specially treated so that it will not felt, full, or shrink. If the suspect fiber seemed like wool when you burned or bleached it but it has now failed the felting test, consider the possibilitythat it is superwash. You may also consider the possibility that this whole thing is going to drive you nuts and then bury the