Knitting Nerdcast: String Theory

Welcome to another episode of the Knitting Nerdcast! Today we are going to dig into yarn and the “science behind the twist.”

I have to tell you, when I contacted Scott Sieke to be the next guest host on the Knitting Nerdcast, he responded to my email with 5 pages of research notes he had already taken on the topic we had agreed to discuss. Needless to say, I was impressed, and a touch overwhelmed. There was so much to talk about! Needless to say—and you will hear it yourself—Scott is a nerd. (He’s also a science outreach educator in Colorado. He learned to knit from his fiancée, Andrea Lotz, Interweave social media manager.)

As Scott mentions during the episode, his experience with yarn extends to knitting this hat and this scarf, as well as a little skein of yarn he spun himself! There is a lot going on when one spins yarn, and there is actually a lot of science behind twist. 

I don’t know much about spinning yarn, so when Scott started talking about how flyers and bobbins work, I had to look up what those were. Here is a pin so you can follow what he is talking about, if you have never spun yarn before.  

Scott explains that there are two ways yarn can be twisted: an “S” twisted yarn’s plies twist from the upper left to lower right, like the middle bar in the letter “S.” A “Z” twisted yarn, which is less common, goes the other direction—the strand moves from lower left to upper right. If this is hard to imagine, just grab some yarn from your stash and take a look! You should be able to tell which kind of twist the yarn has. 

Scott caught me off guard when he mentioned Western vs. Eastern styles of knitting, so I had to go down another rabbit hole. It turns out these styles are dependent on how the stitches are created, rather than what hand you’re holding the working yarn in. I was taught Western-style knitting, where you knit into the front of the stitch and wrap the yarn around the back of the right needle. Eastern-style knitting is where you knit through the back of the stitch and wrap the yarn around the front of the needle! You still end up with knit and purl stitches, you’re just creating them and moving them in different ways. I had no idea this was even a thing, but I’m delighted to know about it! 

Scott blew my mind when he pointed out that DNA looks just like yarn. It doesn’t work the same, but it’s so interesting nonetheless! (BTW, If you’re curious about how DNA transcription works, here’s a video!) 

The moral of the story as I saw it: keep learning about your craft and how/why it works! There is an endless amount to know about fiber and knitting, and it’s all governed by the laws of science. I certainly appreciate yarn on a new level knowing that it resembles DNA. Yarn is life.  

Oh, and here is an explanation of the hairiness index, in case you were wondering! (I sure was.)