Yarn Review - Knit Picks Comfy Sport

Suddenly I realize I've been neglecting to blog, for which I kick myself, but only a little bit.  I have been very busy, with all kinds of things.  But at any rate, I owe you a review of this lovely stuff:

Which I have been using to make this lovely thing:

Which is in fact available for preorder right here.  But at back to the yarn: Knit Picks Comfy Sport.  I've talked about the mixed feelings much of the knitting world has for Knit Picks in another post, and won't get into it again.  This one is 75% Pima cotton, 25% acrylic, and actually also comes in fingering and worsted weights, which is super convenient.  Also, six bazillion solid colors, so there's at least one color for everyone.  Also?  Soft and fluffy like a cloud.  All this combines to make Comfy my first pick for a workhorse cotton yarn.

Downsides?  You do have to remember that it is cotton, and it behaves like cotton (although the acrylic content does mitigate it a bit).  If you expect it to behave like a wool yarn, you will be disappointed.  Also, when I frog it, it tends to send tiny cotton fibers into the air, which makes me sneeze.  The yarn is none worse for the wear though, so I'll take it.  Most fluffy soft cotton yarns pill like a monster, especially if you frog them, and this does not.

So really, I'll probably keep using this stuff as long as Knit Picks makes it.  It's nice, and the price is right.  Can't argue with that.

Acrylic - it doesn't melt babies

Enjoying her acrylic blankie.

I have never heard so much hate for a fiber as I have for acrylic.  I am going to have to break this down if I want to come out even remotely coherent.  So, the main complaints about acrylic are:

• it doesn't breathe.
• it doesn't actually insulate you, it just makes you sweaty. 
• it melts when it gets hot.
• it feels like plastic.
• it is really staticy.
• it is impossible to block, at all. 

Now, the idea that acrylic doesn't breathe is kind of silly.  It is not like wrapping yourself in plastic wrap, as some have claimed.  Look at any knit fabric -- there are holes!  It just doesn't breathe as well as wool or cotton do.  Which brings me to point two -- acrylic does so insulate you.  Just, again, not as well as wool does.  Acrylic does in fact melt, but only when it is very, VERY hot... if you are hot enough that your acrylic sweater/baby blanket/whatever is melting, you have bigger problems than melty plastic stuff.  The feel of acrylic is a little more involved.  Some of it does indeed feel plasticy.  Some of it is scratchy.  But some wool is scratchy and unpleasant, too, and there are MANY textures of acrylic.  To pick two at random, Bernat Softee Baby is soft enough for premies... Red Heart Super Saver is, shall we say, NOT.  As for the static, it depends, really.  Man made fiber + man made fiber does indeed generate a ton of static.  But it's not going to set off sparks against your cotton sheets.

Blocking acrylic gets it's own paragraph.  You CAN block it.  To do it, you have to get it hot enough that it JUST begins to melt.  I do this by shooting it with jets of steam with my iron.  Blocking acrylic is irrevocable.  Because you are actually changing the structure of the fibers, it will never go back the way wool does.  This can be a good thing (you never have to block it again) or a bad thing (if you screw up, you're stuck with it).

Advantages of acrylic?  It is incredibly easy care.  The only way I've figured out to ruin it by washing is to put it in the "sanitize" cycle on my washing machine, which basically blocked it for me.  Would have been nice if it were a shawl, baby blankets not so much.  Because of this, it's GREAT for baby stuff.  Seriously, babies have gooey stuff coming out from all ends, and it's nice to just be able to throw it in the washing machine and not worry about it.  It is fairly hypoallergenic, as well, and comes in a wide range of textures to suit just about anybody's preference.  But for me, the biggest advantage is it's general indestructibility.  As an example, I have an afghan that was made by my great-grandmother when acrylic was the hot new thing.  It is in PERFECT condition, in spite of years of use followed by years in an attic in California.  Wool would have attracted moths or carpet beetles, or simply succumbed to the temperature extremes, years ago.

So, do I like acrylic as much as I do wool?  Personally, no.  But I will always craft with acrylic and acrylic blends.  The unique properties of the fiber mean that there are some things that are just better made from a nice acrylic.  There are also some things that are just better made from Red Heart Super Saver (seriously, it is FAB for toys).  All yarn has a place!

Berocco Weekend

Six balls of Weekend in Cerulean.

Yeah, the days of the snazzy tagline in my review titles may be numbered.  I actually ended up with Weekend as a last second switch out - the yarn I had requested (Berocco Touche) will be discontinued by the time my pattern is released, and it makes little sense to design in a discontinued yarn.  The similarities between the two are actually remarkable.  Both are cable plied, worsted weight, cotton blend yarns that come mostly in warm spring/summer sorts of colors.

Weekend is 75% acrylic and 25% cotton, soft, and very round.  It has very little stretch to it.  The big interesting bit of this yarn is its structure - as I said before, it's cable plied.  That means that the tiny plies were plied together, then those plied pieces were plied into the final yarn.  This makes a yarn that is very durable, very round, and frankly, kind of splitty.  That being said, the texture of it is pretty nice, particularly in a simple pattern like stockinette or garter stitch.  Ironically enough, I don't like cable plied yarns for cables.

Do you have something you want me to review? Needles? Yarn? Notions? Drop me a line! marusempai at gmail dot com. Put "Maru reviews" in the subject line.

Thoughts on fiber

I've noticed that a lot of people tend to have one go to, fail safe fiber.  For most, this is either wool or acrylic.  I've been thinking about that lately, and am slowly coming to the conclusion that it is because, as fiber artists, we simply have too many choices.  I mean, there was a time when you were pretty much limited to your flock, and maybe your neighbor's flock.  No more.  Now you can get alpaca, six kinds of wool, silk, a couple kinds of cotton, acrylic, nylon, a few flavors of rayon... just by going to your local yarn store, or even closer, the internet.  This is a good thing.  But it is difficult to know or predict how each of these fibers will behave, alone or in blends, so we tend to have a go to.

And it is true that a good wool yarn can be made to do just about anything, as can acrylic if you know what you're doing.  But it might not be the best answer.  So I've decided that I'm going to do some posts on fiber types.  Because once you know the basics, it becomes so much easier to get the effect that you want.  Now, it is of course possible to just always get the same yarn (or a comparable blend) as the designer used to make their pattern.  I encourage this, frankly, however it's not always going to be what you want to do.  Sometimes the recommended yarn is unavailable.  Sometimes it's too expensive.  And sometimes you just want a bit of a different effect than the designer got.  All perfectly valid reasons for a substitution... and if you know your fiber, there will be fewer unpleasant surprises along the way.