What is wool yarn?

　　Wool is composed mainly of proteins. Human use of wool dates back to the Neolithic period, when it spread from Central Asia to the Mediterranean and other parts of the world, and then became a major textile material in Asia and Europe. Wool fibers are soft and flexible and can be used to make textiles such as fleece, pile, blankets and felt. Wool products are rich to the touch, warm and comfortable to wear. Sheep&39;s wool accounts for a large proportion of textile materials. The world&39;s largest producers of sheep&39;s wool are Australia, New Zealand, Argentina and China. Sheep wool is divided into five categories: fine wool, semi-fine wool, long wool, hybrid wool, and coarse wool, according to fineness and length. Chinese sheep wool varieties include Mongolian wool, Tibetan wool, and Kazakh wool. The main factors for judging the quality of wool are fineness, curl, color, strength and the content of grass weed.

　　1. Wool has a tighter and thicker arrangement of scales than cashmere, and its shrinkage is greater than that of cashmere. Cashmere fibers have small, smooth scales and an air layer in the middle of the fiber, which makes them lighter in weight and smoother in feel.

　　The curl of wool is smaller than that of cashmere, and the curl number, curl rate, and curl recovery rate of cashmere fibers are larger, which makes it suitable for processing into knitted products with a rich, soft, and elastic feel. The natural curl of cashmere is high, and it is tightly arranged in the spinning and weaving, so it has good warmth, 1.5 to 2 times that of wool.

　　3. Cashmere has a higher cortical content than wool, and the rigidity of cashmere fiber is better than that of wool, i.e. cashmere is softer than wool.

　　4. The fineness unevenness of cashmere is smaller than that of wool, and the appearance quality of its products is better than that of wool.

　　5. The fineness of cashmere fiber is uniform, its density is smaller than that of wool, and its cross-section is more regular and round.

　　6. Cashmere has better moisture absorption than wool, can fully absorb dyes, and is not easy to fade. It has a high moisture recovery rate and a relatively high resistance value.

　　7. Wool is more resistant to acid and alkali than cashmere, and has less damage than cashmere when it encounters oxidizers and reducing agents.

　　8. Generally, wool products have better resistance to pilling than cashmere products, but have greater felt shrinkage.

　　Fineness is an important process characteristic to determine the quality and value of wool fiber, expressed by the diameter of the fiber in microns or quality counts; the smaller the fineness, the higher the count, the finer the spun wool yarn. Length includes natural length and straight length, the former is the straight distance between the ends of the wool bundle, the latter is the length measured by straightening the fiber. Wool with a neat and consistent bend shape will produce yarns and products that are soft to the touch and have good elasticity and warmth. Fine wool bending number and density, coarse wool hair is waveform or spreading no bend. Strength has a direct impact on the sturdiness of the finished product. Strength refers to the stress of the wool on fracture; elongation refers to the increase in length due to fracture forces. Fracture strength varies greatly among wool types. The fineness of the same type of wool is proportional to its fineness, with the coarser the wool, the stronger it is. The more developed the medulla of a medullary wool, the worse its resistance to breakage. Elasticity allows the product to maintain its original shape and is an indispensable characteristic of wool for carpets and rugs. Wool is generally good at felting and moisture absorption. The luster is often related to the state of the scales on the fiber surface, with the fine wool reflecting light weakly and with a softer luster; the coarse wool has a strong and shiny luster. Weak luster is often caused by damage to the scale layer.