I’ve been fascinated recently by a type of unspun yarn called Nutiden.
It’s made in Sweden, of Swedish wool, and comes in some amazing, subtle blended dyed colors, as well as naturals. But it’s only sold in their online shop, and batches appear to sell out very quickly. It’s a very fine continuous strip of carded fiber, put up in disks.
Folks who work with it seem to love it, but I was hesitant to place an order and incur overseas shipping charges and all, when it occurred to me that maybe I could find some (relatively) locally (in the US).
And through the miracle of Ravelry search functionality, I was able to do just that!
I’ve never been organized enough to document my yarn stash in any detail on the platform, but some people do, and even list yarns that they are open to selling or trading. I was able to find someone in the PNW who had some Nutiden in various colors left over from prior projects. Huzzah!
I’m so excited about trying it out. Swedish sheep, coming to visit me! 🙂 I want to check out the characteristics of the fibers (length, fineness, crimp).
But I have to admit that a lot of my interest in the Nutiden is seeing if I can figure out how I can create a very similar yarn from my own wools.
Hopefully I’ll have the Nutiden samples sometime soon, but in the meantime, I’ve been playing around with a makeshift diz
Smallest orifice I’ve used as a diz so far- buttonhole measures about 1mm. To get the Daphne fibers started a needle threader worked nicely. And the resulting roving-
Amazing how many fibers can pass through a 1 mm hole!
It is still quite a bit heavier than Nutiden, but here’s how this little batch knit up
And a photo of the yarn math, for posterity
So the 1 mm orifice is getting me roughly 4 stitches/inch on size 6 needles.
For comparison, here is the new swatch with a chunky unspun hat I knit last week
The hat is knit up at about 2.25 stiches per inch on (i think) a size 9.
So that’s what’s on the needles at the moment.
Hope to have some Swedish show and tell next week!
This is all very fascinating! Years ago I started knitting chair pads with longwool roving and loved how they were turning out; I need to finish that project and USE them. I wonder how they get Nutiden so fine and uniform.
Thanks Michelle- I’m wondering that as well. would love to see their mill setup. i think they may have some of that kind of content available for Patreon subscribers, but I’ve not explored that yet.
How cool- I am excited to see the Swedish yarn, of course! I have pulled my wool through a diz and knit with it. But it was a larger orifice, and I knit Cowichan style sweaters and hats. So this seems quite different.
thanks Donna- i’m excited to check it out as well. I do love sampling!