Nylon Yarn

Why nylon is in the yarn at all

Nylon — polyamide on European labels; the two words mean the same thing — is rarely the point of a yarn. It is almost always the 20 or 25 per cent added to something else, and it is there to stop the yarn wearing out. Wool on its own abrades at the heel and ball of a sock within a season. The same wool with 25% nylon lasts years. That single fact explains most of what is on this page.

Sock yarn is the main event

The standard sock construction is 75% wool to 25% nylon at 4-ply, and West Yorkshire Spinners Signature 4 Ply, Cascade Yarns Heritage, Cascade Yarns Heritage Prints and Valley Yarns Huntington are all built to it. Reinforcement is concentrated where it is needed, and the nylon also helps the yarn take dye brightly and hold a ribbed cuff's elasticity over hundreds of wears. If socks are the project, the sock yarn collection is the better starting point — this page is organised by fibre content, so it also contains plenty of yarn nobody would knit socks from.

Baby yarn is the other half

The second big group of nylon-blend yarns exists for a completely different reason: softness and machine washability. Paintbox Yarns Baby DK and Baby DK Prints, Sirdar Snuggly DK and Snuggly 4 Ply, King Cole Comfort Baby DK, Comfort Aran and Comfort Chunky, Hayfield Baby Blossom DK and Baby Blossom Chunky, and West Yorkshire Spinners Bo Peep Luxury Baby DK all use a nylon component to get a smooth, soft, hardwearing yarn that survives a 40°C wash and a tumble dryer. For a first-size cardigan that will be washed twice a week, that matters more than fibre purity. Value packs in Paintbox Yarns Baby DK and Baby DK Prints cover larger sets and blankets.

Everyday garment blends

Berroco Comfort, Berroco Vintage, Vintage DK and Vintage Chunky use nylon in an acrylic-wool base to make garment yarns that block properly but go in the machine — a genuinely useful combination for jumpers people will actually wear. Debbie Bliss Dulcie, Rowan Softyak DK, Plymouth Yarn Dream DK, Viking Garn Nordlys and Viking Garn Alpaca Storm each add nylon for different reasons: strength in a soft alpaca, structure in a yak blend, resilience in a self-striping sock-weight.

Reading the label

Percentage is what to check. Around 20–25% nylon is the durability range and what socks want. At 5–10% the nylon is usually a binder holding a brushed or fancy construction together, not a strength addition, so do not expect sock longevity from it. Above about 30% the yarn starts to feel synthetic and lose the wool's warmth and moisture handling — fine for a hardwearing bag, less good against skin.

Care, and the one real drawback

Nylon melts. Not at any temperature your washing machine reaches, but absolutely under an iron, so press nylon blends with a cool steam hover and never let a hot plate touch them. Tumble drying is usually permitted on low and is one of the reasons these yarns are chosen, but heat over time will still flatten a brushed surface.

The other thing worth knowing is that nylon does not felt. In a wool-nylon blend this is a feature for socks and a problem for anyone hoping to felt a bag — the wool shrinks around a nylon skeleton and the result is uneven. For deliberate felting, use an untreated pure wool from the 100% wool range instead. For fibre-by-fibre comparison across the rest of the range, browse 4-ply yarn and DK yarn by weight.

Where to go next

Nylon is in yarn for strength, which is why it lives in sock yarn — start there if you are knitting socks. It is also blended into acrylic and wool ranges, and into recycled polyamide yarn. By weight, most of it is 4 ply.