Attack of the Killer Acrylic Yarn

I had two skeins of an unidentified blue yarn in my stash. It looked like wool, but felt like something else. In order to ascertain what fiber it was, I decided to administer the burn test.* One is supposed to do the burn test over a sink. Did I do that? No. So when I lit one end of a strand of the yarn and it flared up, I tried to shake out the flame. The lit end curled up and stuck to the side of my index finger. A few minutes a painful little blister appeared.

Lessons learned from the burn test are: 1) the mystery yarn is most likely synthetic, 2) said yarn gets amazingly hot when burned, 3) next time definitely take proper precautions when administering the burn test.

Since I didn’t like the feel of this yarn (it also looks like it will pill easily), it will find a new home via the thrift store. Should have photographed it before I donated it.

*Different fibers react differently to fire, therefore one can figure out the fiber content of a yarn by burning it. Some knitting books contain a chart detailing these differences.