About the products
White Gum Wool yarn is made from the finest fleece of superfine Saxon merinos and is deliciously soft next to skin.
It comes in a wide range of plys. Our 4, 5, 8 and 10 plys, corresponding to Fingering, Sport, DK and Aran, are traditional worsted spun yarns, with a soft buttery feel and great stitch definition. We also have two wrapped yarns that are made like bouclé, but feel more like chenille: soft, squishy and warm.
In addition to our 100% superfine merino yarns, we have a silk merino blend using 30% tussah silk and 70% WGW merino. Silk acts to reinforce the yarn for use as a sock yarn, and also adds lustre and a heathered quality to the yarn, since the silk takes up the dye differently from the merino wool.
We are transitioning from our original spin style to one called ‘twist-on-twist’, where a fine single thread is plied twice: once in pairs, and then two or more of the pairs are plied together. This reduces pilling, by hiding the pesky cross-fibres that stick out and roll up as pills inside the second ‘twist’. It also improves the wear of knitted items like socks. About half of our worsted yarns are now available in twist-on-twist spin style.
We have nineteen solid and variegated colour ways, inspired by the landscape of the farm.
We sell undyed yarn in all of our yarn weights and blends, and encourage you to explore the artistry of our hand-dyer stockists.
And we sell fleeces from sheep personalities, along with combed top for hand-spinning and felting.
Notes about pilling and wear
White Gum Wool yarns are made from 17-micron, superfine merino wool. This is the calibre of wool used in the finest of Italian men’s suiting, and gives an amazing softness and handle to the yarn.
And, like so many things in life, superfine yarn has its trade-offs: the very thing that makes it lovely and soft next to your skin also gives it more tendency to pill than a yarn made from a harsher, broader micron. It also felts beautifully, when you want it to (and even when you don't!). The simplest solution to pilling is to use a high quality fabric shaver to remove the pills as they appear. The Classic 50 fabric shaver is highly recommended by a number of experienced knitters who use White Gum Wool. To prevent inadvertent felting, follow the care guidelines.
With regard to sock wear, we initially created our 4 ply silk merino yarn to replace the original WGW 10% nylon-reinforced sock yarn, wanting to get away from using synthetics with our beautifully soft superfine merino. We hoped the high tensile strength of the silk, along with its resistance to felting, would make a good substitute. We also expected the twist-on-twist construction to increase the yarn’s ability to withstand wear. After a couple of years of experience using this yarn as a sock yarn we can report that it is not quite as sturdy as our original nylon-reinforced sock yarn (now out of stock), but certainly wears better than the straight merino 4 ply.