Jillian’s Spinning: Woolen, Worsted and Woolen-N-Worsted

Last week I accidentally plied a woolen singles and a worsted singles together, making woolen-n-worsted 2-ply instead of a woolen or worsted 2-ply.

I spun more singles and plied woolen to woolen and worsted to worsted and knit all of them into swatches.

Here are close ups of the woolen 2-ply and worsted 2-ply – they are both Corriedale.

Woolen 2-ply left and worsted 2-ply right.

As I’d expect woolen is fuzzier and worsted is smoother. The worsted stitches look crisper too.

Here is the woolen-n-worsted swatch:

woolen-n-worsted swatch

Smooth-ish and the stitches are a little squirrelier than a worsted. Here’s a closer look:

woolen-n-worsted closer

I can see the two different plies in this one, especially in the garter stitch at the top and bottom. It’s interesting too, that this swatch is heavier than the woolen swatch but not as heavy as the worsted swatch. It hits the middle in all things. There is nothing wrong with this yarn, I would use it for any project, I would even sneak it in with a wholly woolen or worsted project, but probably around the edges.

Can you see the difference? Would you knit with it?