Spinning count
is a measure of fibre fineness and distribution developed by the English. It is defined as the number of
hanks
of yarn that can be spun from a
pound
of wool. A hank of wool is 560
yards
long (560 yd/lb = 1.129 km/kg). In theory a pound of 62s wool could produce 34720 yards of yarn.
[1]
As it is now a relatively simple matter to measure the average fibre diameter and distribution, spinning count is being replaced with the specification of average fibre diameter in
micrometers
and fiber distribution in
standard deviations
.