Textile Structure
how cloth is put together
Series

Count — the series

2 essays on one idea, from the one that introduces it to the one that assumes the rest.
  1. Six ways of saying how fine a yarn is. The same four yarns written in six count systems, all placed on one axis of tex. A direct system states mass per unit length and rises as the yarn coarsens; an indirect one states length per unit mass and falls. Both kinds are in daily use and neither says which it is.

    The yarn count systems, and why there are several

    Half the ways of saying how fine a yarn is get bigger as it gets finer and half get smaller. That is not carelessness — and one of the constants buried in the oldest rule of thumb turns out to be a measurement nobody wrote down.

    part 1 · setting
  2. The flattening a knitted fabric asks for, against its own tightness. Every point is a solved fabric — 18 of them, over five loop lengths, three relaxation states and three counts — and the vertical axis is the closest its adjacent courses come, in diameters. The values run from 0.707 to 0.839 and they fall on one curve against the tightness factor, which is the model's only dimensionless group. That is what makes this a structural requirement rather than an arithmetical accident of one example: a tighter fabric demands a flatter yarn, by an amount its own tightness decides, and nothing about the fibre or the count enters except through that group.

    The count that decides how flat

    A knitted fabric's demanded flattening is a function of its tightness factor, and a tightness factor is the square root of a count over a loop length. So a coarser yarn at the same loop is flatter — which is a prediction about a spinner's choice that nobody has framed as one.

    part 2 · setting

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