News of Note:
Some standards are a good thing, I just read an article on Shetland wool mills and the House of Commons debate. The EU is now insisting on uniform weights and measures throughout its mills in member countries. I can see the pros and cons from the mills view point. The need to refine and retool old machines will add cost in manufacturing. But as a knitter it would be really nice to know that if you picked up lace weight shetland it would be 185 yards in a ball. Though I can imagine this is going to cause a huge problem with old patterns still in print who have reference to a specific yarn that had old yardage listed. It is certainly going to be a new knitting challenge.
EU regulations:
I couldn't tell from the article exactly when the new standards go into effect. I am guessing soon. I just randomly picked up the documents a friend had on her coffee table concerning country requirements for becoming part of the EU. (Article :The European Network for Livestock Systems Institute 2006) So I of course had to jot down the shetland reference.Shetland weight wool is now put up in 25-gram balls of 130 yards
Shetland Lace weight is in 25-gram balls of 185 yards
Shetland Cobweb is now in 25-gram balls of 380 yards.
Hmm, interesting. How odd that they should specify the weight in metric measurements, but the length in imperial.
ReplyDeleteI thought that 'laceweight' was a collective category for all weights between fingering and gossamer. Does this really mean that lace yarn spun in the EU (or indeed sold in the EU?) will all have to be the same weight from hereon and that there will suddenly only be two weights to choose from: standard 'Lace' and standard 'Gossamer', regardless of fibre content and resultant yarn strength/loft etc?