- published: 02 Aug 2011
- views: 7745722
Wool is the textile fibre obtained from sheep and certain other animals, including cashmere from goats, mohair from goats, qiviut from muskoxen, vicuña, alpaca, camel from animals in the camel family, and angora from rabbits.[citation needed]
Wool has several qualities that distinguish it from hair or fur: it is crimped, it is elastic[citation needed], and it grows in staples (clusters). In the U.S. the term wool is usually restricted to describing the fibrous protein derived from the specialized skin cells called follicles in sheep, although in the U.K. it may be used of any long curling fibre such as wood wool, wire wool etc.
Wool's scaling and crimp make it easier to spin the fleece by helping the individual fibres attach to each other, so they stay together. Because of the crimp, wool fabrics have a greater bulk than other textiles, and retain air, which causes the product to retain heat. Insulation also works both ways; Bedouins and Tuaregs use wool clothes to keep heat out.
The amount of crimp corresponds to the fineness of the wool fibres. A fine wool like Merino may have up to 100 crimps per inch, while the coarser wools like karakul may have as few as 1 to 2. Hair, by contrast, has little if any scale and no crimp, and little ability to bind into yarn. On sheep, the hair part of the fleece is called kemp. The relative amounts of kemp to wool vary from breed to breed, and make some fleeces more desirable for spinning, felting, or carding into batts for quilts or other insulating products, including the famous tweed cloth of Scotland.
Catherine wheel may refer to:
Actors: Patrick Bergin (actor), John E. Keane (composer), Niall Buggy (actor), Susan Wooldridge (actress), Mark Day (editor), Gub Neal (producer), Richard Broke (producer), Clive Wood (actor), Marston Bloom (actor), Ian Hopkins (producer), Noella Smith (director), Pat Godfrey (costume designer), Ian McDonald (writer), Tom Beasley (actor), David Sammy (actor),
Genres: Drama,