Definition of "worsted"

An old set-stitched chair, valanced and fringed around with party-coloured worsted bobs, stood at the bed’s head opposite to the side where my father’s head reclined.

1761, Laurence Sterne, chapter 29, in The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman‎, volume III

[…] the kitten had been having a grand game of romps with the ball of worsted Alice had been trying to wind up, and had been rolling it up and down till it had all come undone again […]

1871, Lewis Carroll, chapter 1, in Through the Looking-Glass‎

"Yes, young people are usually blind to everything but their own wishes, and seldom imagine how much those wishes cost others," said Mrs Garth. She did not mean to go beyond this salutary general doctrine, and threw her indignation into a needless unwinding of her worsted, knitting her brow at it with a grand air.

1871–1872, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter LVII, in Middlemarch […], volume III, Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons, book VI, page 266

Finally he took a ball of worsted and tied strings of it across the back passage and across the opposite door.

1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “(please specify the chapter number)”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, published April 2019

[...] the undertaker’s wife opened a side door, and pushed Oliver down a steep flight of stairs into a stone cell, damp and dark: forming the ante-room to the coal-cellar, and denominated ‘kitchen’; wherein sat a slatternly girl, in shoes down at heel, and blue worsted stockings very much out of repair.

1838, Boz [pseudonym; Charles Dickens], chapter 4, in Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy’s Progress. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I, II, or III), London: Richard Bentley, […]

He had tied a bit of white worsted round his neck -- Why? Where did he get it? Was it a badge -- an ornament -- a charm -- a propitiatory act? Was there any idea at all connected with it?

1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], part I