Tweed yarns are made by incorporating imperfections, impurities and waste products obtained from the processing of fibres. These fibre inclusions appear as multi-coloured flecks. They are called neps and noils. Neps are small tangled knots that may or may not be entangled around seed coats or dust. Noils (rhymes with soils) are short irregular fibres combed out of long fibres. Once cleaned of short fibres, the long fibres will be used to prepare luxurious wools, cottons or silks.
Coco is modelling a slouch hat made from a tweed of 50% lightly felted Merino wool, 25% viscose and 25% alpaca. This particular yarn has plenty of personality with its gradual shifting from blue to turquoise to green tones. Its neps add a rustic heathered look.
The hat below looks tweedy too, though not as rustic. It is the texture, its lightness and subtle colour variations that make it special. The fibre content is 60% wool, 20% alpaca and 20% silk noils. Luxury silk yarn is smooth and lustrous due to long continuous monofilaments unwound from the cocoon of the bombyx moth. In contrast, silk noil yarn is made up of short or broken filaments. These lesser “staple” fibres result from cocoons where moths have broken out too early, damaged cocoons or leftover waste from processing silk.
