Hand knitting:- This is the traditional way of knitting using “knitting needles” (also referred to as knitting pins). These needles come in different thickness’ depending on the thickness of yarn and the desired effect. Each country has its own system of defining needles. There is now an effort to standardize the specification by referring to the needle diameter expressed in millimeters’, so for our hand knitting we would use
                         Double knitting                   4 mm needles
                         Aran weight                        6 mm needles
                         Double Aran                        9mm needles
                         Treble aran                         12mm needles
We also have 15, 20 and 25mm needles (that is 1 inch thick) which are used when specially requested by customers for ultra heavy knitwear.

Hand framed knitting (also hand loomed):- This is knitwear produced using latch needles on a machine bed. Each row of knitting is produced by the knitter manually moving the machine carriage across the needle bed. Between rows the knitter can present different colors to selected needles to form a desired pattern known as hand intarsia, or move stitches to different needles to give a stitch pattern as with “hand loomed arans”. 

Intarsia knitting:- a knitted fabric containing two or more colors, each area of color knitted from a separate yarn which is contained entirely within that area. Hand intarsia or true intarsia is produced on a hand frame and the knitter interweaves the yarns to avoid holes and there is only one color on each needle. Automatic machines cannot interweave the yarns and joints are achieved by overlapping the colors on the boundary needles. This gives a double yarn thickness at the color vertical joins, as well as the second color showing through.

Jacquard knitting:- A term borrowed from the weaving industry and refers to the mechanism that enables needles to knit one color and ignore other colors to give a desired pattern. The ignored colors float behind the stitch as in weaving where the weft yarn floats over several warp yarns to give a desired pattern. These floating yarns if too long can cause problems and catch in jewelry and watch straps etc. Now sometimes refereed to “true jacquard” to distinguish it from the jacquards produced on an automatic machine.

On modern automatic machines the floats are knitted to give, in effect double thickness material and is known as “milano backing”. The fabric looses some softness and the feel on the yarn.                                                                                   

Machine knitting:- This is knitwear produced on an automatic machine, normally with latch needles on a needle bed and a carriage being motor driven to form the stitches. These machines have become very sophisticated and can now produce multicoloured jacquard patterns and stitch patterns that are hard to distinguish from hand knitting.

Cut & Sew knitwear:- Automatic machines are at their most efficient when producing a length of knitted fabric, and not a shaped component. For this reason about 99% of commercially available knitwear is produced from lengths of knitted fabric which is then cut to shape and sewn together; hence the term “cut and sewn” knitwear.

Fully Fashioned knitwear:- This is the way knitwear was always produced with each component to the correct size and shape and then the components sewn together. The machinery to produce components to the correct shape are much more expensive and the production time much longer, so most commercially available knitwear is not produced this way.

Natural fibers

Wools:- Strictly speaking this refers to the thread produced from the hair (fleece) of sheep only and comes in different qualities (botany, lambs wool, geelong, Shetland etc.). The thread made from other animals is either referred to as hair (mohair, camel hair, etc.) or by the animal itself (angora, alpaca, cashmere, etc.).

Silk:- Probably the only animal thread in common use that is not hair but the covering of the silkworms cocoon.

Vegetable Yarns:- The most common vegetable yarns are linen, cotton and hemp, although vegetable products are also chemically treated to produce products like  rayon and rubber and could be defined as man-made fibers.

Fancy yarns:- This refers to special structure yarns such as boucle. chenille, snarls  etc. These are constructed by deliberately causing loops or trapping tufts between the main yarn and a binder yarn. The binders are normally a strong synthetic such as nylon, but the binder is not normally included in the resultant yarn, which would still be classed as 100% the main yarn.

Man-made fibers

Synthetic polymers:- These are normally known by a trademarked name depending which chemical company supplied the basic polymers although some names such as nylon, acrylics and lycra are in common use. These are much stronger than natural fibers and frequently blended with natural yarns to produce a stronger yarn that can be machined at higher speeds, so decreasing production time. The proportion of each yarn content (by weight) has to be stated on the label.