| Yarn Fiber Definitions | Yarn Weights |

Arylic		A synthetic fiber made from acrylonitirile which comes from coal, air water petroleum and limestone.  It has a soft, wooly hand; wash-and wear performance; excellent resistance to sunlight and good stability to repeated laundering.
Alpaca		A type of Llama which has a very long hair which is considered a wool.  It resembles mohair.  Alpaca fiber is soft, silky and fairly lightweight.
Andalusian Wool		A medium fine grade of merino wool from spain.
Astrakha		Wool obtained from karakul lambs.
Botany Wools		All Australian wools of high quality.
Bourette Silk		A coarse silk yarn spun from the waste produced in the manufacturing of schappe silk and silk elongation.
Camel Hair		A hair yielded by the Bactrian camel of Asia.
Cashmere		A fine, soft, downy wool undergroth produced by the cashmere goat.
Chenille		Apile yarn made by weaving pile yarn and cutting into strips.
Chubut Wool		A fine quality merino wool produced in southern Argentina.
Flax		The fiber from which linen yarn is produced.
Fleece		Wool sheared from sheep or other animals that produce wool fiber.
Grease Wool		Wool from the live sheep with yolk and swint intact.
Ice Wool		A thick, soft-spun, two-ply worsted wool yarn used for handknitting.
Jute		A bast fiber from the round pod jute or long pod jute primarily grown in Pakistan.
Lambswool		Wool from a lamb. Extremely soft.
Linen		A man made fiber made from flax.
Merino Wool		Wool from the merino sheep which produces a short fiber of  high quality.
Mohair		The Long, white, lustrous hair of the angora goat.
Mulberry Silk		Silk produced by worms which feed on leaves of mulberry trees.
Mylon		A synthetic fiber that is very stong, resistant to wringles and abrasion.
Pima Cotton		A variety of American-Egyptian cotton, grown mainly in the southwest United States.
Polyester		The most widely used and versatile of the man-made/synthetic fibers.
Polypropelene		A paraffin-based syntetic fiber.  Also known as olefin.
Pulled Wool		Wool taken from dead animals by means of chemicals.
Rabbit Hair		A soft hair from a rabbit.
Ramie		A strong, lustrous, natural fiber from the ramie plant grown in Asia.
Rayon		Made from cellulose and is weak when wet.  Weakened by exposure to sunlight.
Saxony		A fine, elastic wool with a short, strong staple obtained from German merino sheep.
Scoured Wool		Wool washed clean by mechanized and chemical methods.
Shetland Wool		A fiber produced by the Shetland sheep.
Silk		The product of the silk worm.
Superwash Wool		A wool that has been treated in such a way that it is machine washable.
Toussah		Silk fiber from wilk, uncultivated silkworms.
Virgin Wool		Virgin wool is classified by the Federal Trade Commision standards indicating fibers which have never been made into fabric before.  The term is primarily used to differentiate between those fibers that have been reprocessed, reclaimed and reused.
Viscose Rayon		Rayon produced via the viscose method.
Waste Silk		Short silk filaments that cannot be reeled from the cocoon.
Wild Silk		The term wild silk is a commercial term since the worms, which were beeding originally in a wild environment.
Wool		Wool (unspecified) - general purpose.
Polyamide		A polyamide is a polymer containing monomers joined by peptide bonds. They can occur both naturally, examples being proteins, such as wool and silk, and can be made artificially, examples being Nylon, Kevlar and sodium poly(aspartate).