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.

Plymouth Cotton Kisses

Worked up yarn with included buttons.

I can't come up with a good snazzy title for this one.  This is an interesting yarn.  It is made from several plies, two or three of which are smooth-ish and kind of kinky, and one of which is soft and slubby.  I am really into texture (those of you who follow me may have noticed that even my lace work is meant to be textured), so I like working with this yarn.  It works up fairly quickly, and because of the slubbiness, it can be worked at a fairly large gauge without looking holey.  Because of the wildly different texture between the plies, however, it can be quite splitty.  I do not like knitting with it, frankly.  I don't mind a little splittiness in crochet, however, and think it works up really pretty.

This stuff is also a really good deal - each ball comes with three little ducky buttons and two baby sweater patterns (a cardigan and a pullover).  One ball is plenty of yarn to make either of the enclosed patterns, so it's great for emergency baby gifts.

The pattern I'm making with the stuff (it's still top secret, as it's in submission to a magazine) reflects how I think of it, really.  Simple stitch pattern, in crochet, to show off the yarn's texture.  I like it (for crochet), and will certainly use it again.

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.