Getting to know Tukuwool Fingering

Tukuwool Fingering is a well loved wool yarn, spun and dyed in Finland from Finnish Wool. This traditional fingering weight yarn is lightly processed and grippy enough to steek. It's perfect for colourwork, creates a glowing texture of stitches, makes cables pop but with a drape that makes it lovely in lace too.

As knitters ourselves, the Ysolda studio team love really getting to know the yarns we recommend to other knitters. Sharing knowledge about knitting and yarn is what really keeps us creating as a business! We recently sent some skeins of Tukuwool Fingering to our regular contributor Nidhi to get her thoughts on knitting with Tukuwool Fingering yarn. - Ysolda

The Yarn

The Tukuwool range is spun and dyed in Finland from Finnish Wool. Tukuwool Fingering is a lightly processed wool which means some lanolin and vegetable matter remain after the processing, and a wonderful woolly scent. The yarn itself is a woollen spun 2 ply and has a quite tight and lively twist.

The Range of Colours

Tukuwool Fingering has a lovely range of colours to play around with, from the neutrals to the brights. They also have a heathered base for some colours giving them that beautiful rustic look. There are both natural and dyed heathered colours which are overdyed on naturally grey yarn. Colours with an H before the number are dyed on naturally grey yarn and have a heathered appearance. Colours with just a number are dyed on white yarn and have a more solid appearance.

Texture

Tukuwool fingering swatched up in stockinette and garter on 3.5mm needles, in colour H33 Uoma.

While knitting with Tukuwool Fingering, the words that came to mind were light, airy, grippy, crisp and warm. It’s the kind of yarn where I can make a yarn ball and throw it up in the air without it unravelling, which is very typical of woollen spun yarn! It also means its lightness and grippy-ness would make it work just as well for a cozy sweater like Threipmuir as it would a pretty colourwork hat like Gleði.

The convenience of using woollen spun yarns like Tukuwool Fingering is that while working textures like lace or cables, even if I happen to drop a stitch, the grip in the yarn ensures that the loop doesn’t unravel too far and can usually be found a row or two below, waiting to be helped back on to the needle.

Frogging the work on the other hand could be a little trickier. While the loops as such behave themselves, if the needle hasn’t gone through the entire loop cleanly, the fibres could get interlocked making it difficult to pull out stitches quickly.

Tukuwool Fingering blocks well and the swatch holds its shape after drying. If you’re worried it could be a bit rough, don’t be! It softens up after a good soak. It is wonderfully light and when you squish the garter swatch, it springs right back into shape.

Colourwork

Tukuwool Fingering is a reliable choice for colourwork projects. Its characteristic woolly texture and natural grip delivers an evenness in the fabric that surprised a novice Fair Isle knitter like me. I have always taken the safe path thus far in colourwork knitting and stuck to projects with simple stripes or slipped stitches to add that pop of colour. However, this experience with Tukuwool Fingering is giving me the courage to try out more Fair Isle knitting.

Holding yarns in both hands and trying to maintain an even tension is not the easiest task for newbies, but this yarn makes for a very forgiving fabric. The tiny fuzzy fibres fill up the spaces between stitches and kind of bind the fabric together. This also means that if I can keep my tension uniform across the stitches, the floats will neatly stick to the back of my work and any unevenness in tension gets hidden. Needless to say, it can be used just as successfully for mosaic knitting as well as adding simple stripes to a project.

Cables

While cables can sometimes feel bulky or dense in a fabric, in the case of knitting with Tukuwool Fingering, it manages to add a well defined structure to the pattern while keeping the fabric light in weight. I’m happy to say Tukuwool Fingering works up cables beautifully with a good stitch definition. While knitting, the grip in the yarn ensures that the stitches stay in place even if they come off the needles. This also helps if you’re working cables over a small number of stitches or want to avoid using a cable needle altogether.

Twisted ribbing is a personal favorite of mine and I tend to incorporate it into a lot of my work, which is why I had to add them to this swatch. I love it! The stitches stand out, are well defined and add just the right amount of texture.

The Abbeyhill Sweater showcases deeply textured cables and stockinette with a swingy, slightly cropped shape. Perfect if you want to give Tukuwool Fingering a try in a garment that's the ideal mix of an intuitive, fun cable pattern and relaxing knitting.

Lace

Whenever I see woolen spun yarn, I usually think colourwork projects or textured wraps, maybe even simple stockinette sweaters. I went down a similar road with Tukuwool Fingering, working the lace swatch only after all the other swatches were done. Having now knit with Tukuwool Fingering, I have to admit, I have just been made deeply aware of how much I underestimated the lace capability of this yarn. As mentioned earlier this yarn blocks very well, and while I wouldn’t stretch a yarn of this structure too much when wet, it still has enough give and lets the pattern bloom once dry. I used an all-over lace pattern stitch to get an idea of how the entire swatch fabric would feel like, as opposed to just a lace panel at the centre or at the sides. I can easily imagine this as an elegant lacy cardigan which provides as much style as it does warmth.

When I hold the swatch up to the light, I can see the tiny fuzzy fibres almost filling up the yarn overs, giving a feeling of being warm despite all the lacy-ness.

Tukuwool Fingering is clearly a very versatile yarn and my experience of knitting with Tukuwool Fingering has really shown just how versatile it can be! If you’re looking to knit up something special for yourself or for the people you love, this yarn definitely has something for each one of us. Have you tried knitting with Tukuwool Fingering? We'd love to hear about your experience and what you've made. You can even leave a review on the Tukuwool Fingering product page here too to help other knitters choose their yarn!

Want to get to know some of our other yarns in the Ysolda curated range in more detail? Click here to find our series of in depth yarn write ups.