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.

Yarn Review: All For Love of Yarn Luminosity Fingering

First of all, can I express my amazement that Angela has managed to get pink, blue, purple, and green into one ball of yarn, and have it be such a lovely tonal?  Everything from All For Love of Yarn comes in these special limited pooling colorways, and they are a delight to work with.  You can have festive yarn and festive stitches, and be able to see both at the same time!

This specific yarn (Luminosity) is 70% superwash merino, 20% bamboo rayon, and 10% nylon.  It has great drape and a lovely sheen to it (so great stitch definition!), and is holding up to all my frogging beautifully.  It would make a really luscious pair of socks.  One thing to remember about it is that bamboo rayon is still rayon, so it tends to squeak a bit on plastic needles/hooks.  If that's the sort of thing that bothers you, you should use tools in a different material.

Also, that's the swatch for my upcoming Tea Party Stole, which is included in my book.  It's turning out really pretty, isn't it?  I love star stitch for showing off nice yarn.

Suddenly I'm glad I didn't tell you about this last night like I was going to (instead choosing to veg out in front of junk tv).  I just found out that tomorrow is Angela's birthday, and so you can get 38% off any in stock purchase with the code BDAY38.  Tomorrow only!  Buy yarn!  (I'm probably going to!)

My favorite thing about crochet...

...is that you can use very fine yarn, and still have a project finished this century.  Case in point: I am currently crocheting a sweater in fingering weight.  If I tried to do that in knitting, I don't think I would ever finish.  Maybe there are people out there for whom knitting is faster.  But I don't think I've ever met one.

Review: Panda Cotton

In all honesty, I think I like every Crystal Palace Yarns yarn I've tried.  Panda Cotton is no exception.  It is a fingering weight 59% bamboo, 25% cotton, 16% elastic nylon plied yarn.  I think it's an excellent choice for wool-free socks -- it is soft and springy and durable.  I freely admit that my Panda Cotton socks aren't very old, but they seem to be showing wear at a rate comparable to any of my wool socks.  It also comes in 50 g (as opposed to 100 g) balls, which I think is a perk.  The smaller put up makes it easier to get exactly how much you need if you are doing a larger project, yet isn't so small that it causes problems in smaller projects.  The yardage is pretty good at 182 per ball.  This is slightly less than most comparable wool yarns, however I've found this to be pretty standard.  Cotton just weighs more per yard than wool does, as far as I can tell.

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.

New knit pattern!

Last month was wacky... but I did finish a pattern!  Sometimes as it warms up outside, it gets cold inside. A shawl is perfect to keep you warm in overly enthusiastic air conditioning, but shawl pins are fiddly and easy to loose. This lovely wrap uses small buttons to hold it in place, making it easy on, easy off for transitional weather and cold buildings. Worked from the small end, with decorative lace increases perfect for showing off self striping yarn.

Knitpicks Chroma... I got the new yarn!

I have to be honest, I feel pretty special for actually getting  Chroma in my yarn support package.  The reason is I know several other designers who submitted proposals for Chroma that got something else, plus it is a BRAND NEW yarn line so they're probably swamped with requests for it, which leads me to believe that they're being choosy about who they actually give it to.  If you know for a fact that I'm mistaken, I suppose you can tell me, or you can just let me continue to feel special.

Anyway, Chroma is a single ply, 70% wool 30% nylon blend yarn.  It is self striping, with those long slow color transitions that are so popular right now.  Think Noro, but less rustic.  It is very soft, and so far has NO hay in it.  Maybe I'm the only one, but I find a lot of hay in Noro.  The colors are lovely and rich.  It comes in both fingering and worsted weights.  One thing I can say is even tho it's a wool nylon blend in fingering weight, I don't personally recommend it for socks.  Partially because it's my personal policy not to knit socks out of non-superwash wool, and partially because the fuzzy texture of Chroma, inside a shoe, sounds like felt and pill city to me.  It does make lovely accessories, however, and is very pleasant to work with.  It has a little bit of the thick and thin thing going, but not enough to mess with your gauge.  As with all self striping yarn, I particularly like it for things that have shaping with increases or decreases... I like how the stripes bend around the corners.

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.

Gratuitous stash flash

While I'm talking about All For Love of Yarn, I just had to pull out my stash of Angela-dyed fingering weight.  Mmmm.

Clockwise from the top, those are her Nogi, Soleful, Resplendence, and Opulence bases.  You've also seen her Lublu base... it's what I'm using for my erstwhile crochet socks.

Wait, why am I talking about this again?  Um... Opulence has cashmere in it?  Weekly theme?  I suppose I just felt the need to take pictures of pretty yarn.  I don't do that very often, as it cuts into the time I could be knitting/crocheting the pretty yarn.  But sometimes it's fun.

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.

The trigger mittens, they are a success!

Remember I was knitting these for my brother's birthday-come-Christmas present?  I just had to show them off!  They fit him perfectly (well, they are VERY snug, but that's how he wanted them), and most importantly, they are DONE.  Doing these magic loop two at a time was a VERY bad idea, although I may give the technique one more try on some socks.  He has declared them Fonzie gloves.  EHHHH!  :D

Old Reliable - Knitpicks Stroll

If I may put my summary first, Knitpicks Stroll has three big strong points:

• It is inexpensive.
• It comes in about a billion colors.
• It is readily available from the Knitpicks website.

The problem most knitters have with it, it seems, is that it is from Knitpicks.  There are few yarnish questions that will raise as much ire from knitters as "do you like Knitpicks yarn."  There are some that figure that buying from Knitpicks is like shooting your local yarn store in the foot.  The way I feel though, is if the (financial, often as not) choice is Knitpicks yarn, big box store yarn, or NO yarn, I will pick the Knitpicks yarn every time.  I have yet to find a better yarn for the price.

Which begs the question of why am I designing in Knitpicks Stroll, specifically, and Knitpicks yarn in general.  The fact of the matter is Stroll is a good, solid workhorse sock yarn.  It is soft enough, durable enough, fairly average fingering weight yarn.  It comes in all my favorite (read: all the) colors.  If you needed something for colorwork for a kid, it's superwash.  It makes very nice socks.  No matter how rich (ha) I get, there will always be a place for Stroll in my stash.  It's not the best sock yarn ever.  But it's a good, serviceable yarn that gets the job done.  It looks good for a great price, is easy to get, and oh yeah, the colors.

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.