One Saturday, I found several hanks of very fine, variegated yarn on the Guild’s giveaway table. The yarn was dyed in three distinct colorways featuring cream, yellow, orange, red, and brown. The colorways had hand-written round paper labels as follows:
977 Hosiery,
979 (on the back of the label, 845 scribbled out in pencil), and
TG1 Hosiery.

I took the yarn home with me.

Sheffield is about 50 miles south of Bradford, a mill town. Before my time in the Hallamshire Guild, the group occasionally chartered a bus to take them to shop at clearance sales at the mills in Bradford. Participants told about how they strategically claimed seats on the bus, so they would have room to transport the bags and bags of yarn they came home with. The hosiery yarn I took from the giveaway table may have been acquired during one of these trips.

At about 30 wraps per inch, the hosiery yarn was at the border between “super fine” and “lace” weight. Source: https://www.craftyarncouncil.com/standards/how-measure-wraps-inch-wpi

Yarn number 977 Hosiery weighed in at 189 grams, and number 979 weighed 279 grams. When stretched out, the hanks of TG1 Hosiery measured about 30 inches long.

Many years later in 2021, I wound the yarn into cakes. The cake in the photo is colorway number 977. I spent a lot of time untangling the hanks, and gently pulling strands apart that were felting themselves together. The felting strands led me to believe the yarn was wool or a wool blend.

Even more years later, in 2025, I still hadn’t used the yarn, but I imagined it would make nice doilies.

The Hallamshire Guild was online in 2025 at https://hallamshirewsd.org.uk
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