Kids + Summer + Kool Aid =

YARN!  Here at Casa Driggs we have been having some fun with Kool Aid and wool.  I really enjoy dying, but not enough to buy a separate set of pots for it (check the labels of commercial dyes some time -- even the "green" ones are pretty toxic!).  So the solution is food grade wool dyeing.  Other advantage?  It won't hurt my kids if they decide to sample the dye pot.  This is our most recent creation:

That's 200 g of wool, dyed with five packets of sugar free Kool Aid (three orange, on cherry, one lemonade).  It really is great fun for everyone!  With that in mind, I have some tips:

• A general rule of thumb for a saturated color is one packet of Kool Aid per ounce of yarn or fiber.
• If you are kettle dying, make sure to heat until the dye bath is CLEAR -- if you're hand painting and microwaving/steaming, the run off when you're done should be clear too.
• If you're dyeing with kids, it's extra fun to play changing colors -- when you mix the packets together, and then again as you're watching the dye bath go to clear.  This is especially fun with purple, as red dye strikes at a lower temperature than blue, so your purple water will turn blue before it goes clear.

Review: Cascade 220 Superwash Sport

I like Cascade 220.  I like Cascade 220 Superwash.  So when I found out it comes in sport weight?  Woo!  This is a soft and fluffy plied yarn.  I find the superwash softer than the regular 220, personally.  It's very smooth, and has nice stitch definition.  The only thing I don't like about this yarn is the slightly confusing yardage - rather than being 220 yards, it is 136 yards (in a 50 g skein).  That means a lot of ends to weave in in a large project, but I think its scrummy merino softness is worth it.  It comes in a great range of colors, as well... you've virtually guaranteed to find something you like, and the price is pretty good, too.

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.

Mmmm, cashmere...

I have two yarn reviews for you in the next week, and both have on thing in common... CASHMERE! Cashmere, the god of fibers! Well, I've got a personal soft spot for silk, but come on... cashmere!

Today's review is on Knitpicks Capra. It is 85% merino, 15% cashmere and all soft and fluffy. It just feels luxurious... and at a very reasonable price, to boot! It is round, plied, and oh yeah, did I mention fluffy? It is listed as a DK weight but because of the poof factor, I find it works better when worked at a worsted gauge. I haven't had any problems with splittiness, and it does ok with frogging.

It's also perfect for next to the skin wear - I'm designing a cowl of it. It is also incredibly warm, so great for winter gear. Seriously, I put the cowl over my neck, didn't even button it, and my first thought was "wow, I'm warmer than I was a second ago." Really snuggly. Because it is so round, it also shows complicated stitching really well.

All around, this is really nice yarn, for a good price. As with anything Knitpicks, are there better cashmere blends out there? Yeah, probably. But they're freaking expensive. This is an excellent "workhorse luxury" sort of yarn. Seriously, I want to make the whole WORLD hats out of this stuff, because it is so great to work with and so great to wear. My ONLY complaint is that I wish it came in more colors. The palette is overwhelmingly bright. But as it's a fairly new addition to the KP line, I'm sure there's more to come.

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.

Crochet socks

Picture does not do yarn colors justice.

Remember when I talked about these?  It took me forever to get past the swatch!  As you can see though, they are coming along at a halfway decent clip.  I have already made an alteration tho... front post/back post ribbing looks nice, but it isn't stretchy the way single crochet ribbing is.  I'm looking forward to seeing how these fit.  I have wide ol' duck feet, but dainty little ankles, and had just resigned myself to socks being loose at the ankle, but it's looking like I'll be able to have socks snug all the way up with these.  Also?  The colors in this yarn are way fun.  I'm glad I'm using it for my crochet sock trial, as I don't knit vanilla socks very well (they bore me, frankly).  A complicated stitch pattern would get lost in the pretty colors.

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.