Review: Moonshine

I am a yarn and fiber nerd.  I freely admit it.  So when I saw the interesting construction of Moonshine, I had to give it a try.  Moonshine is 73% nylon, 10% kid mohair, 9% wool, and 8% metallic, however the different fibers aren't simply blended together.  The yarn is two plies, one of which is actually a knit tube.  This ply is smooth and shiny, and contains most or all of the nylon and all of the metallic fibers.  The second ply is much thinner, and a blend of most or all of the wool and all of the kid mohair.  This leads the yarn to be smooth to the touch, yet have the fuzzy halo of kid mohair.  It's very soft, and the little glitzy bits of metallic fiber are a fun compliment, rather than an unnecessary distraction as metallic fiber often is.  The color repeats are quite short, which means less chances for unpleasant pooling.

The one downside I can find to this yarn is that, like all mohair yarns, it is incredibly difficult to frog.  Seriously, that halo is like freaking glue once a stitch is formed. But that's the way all yarns with halo are, so if you want halo, you're just going to have to be darn sure what you're doing with it before you start.  My advice is to get an extra ball for swatching, because you're going to want to do as little frogging as possible.

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.

Drowning in WIPs

I just thought I would post this, so you can all laugh at me.  I am up to my eyeballs.  First, there is the sweater of doom:

It is actually mostly done, but I still have to grade the pattern, which is pretty much the bane of my existance right now.  Then there's the sock design for Knit Picks:

A series of embarrassing math errors happened in this one.  The math errors are fixed, but with all the frogging I had to do, I feel like I wasted a lot of time.  Then there's the couch quilt:

This one is completely done, except that I don't have any batting, and no money to buy batting until next week at the earliest.  I even made the binding strip.  There is literally nothing more I can do on this until I manage to aquire some batting.  So of course I started another quilt:

This is square one of thirty six for a bed quilt for me.  I have a long way to go.  And of course there's my knitting in the car project:

A pair of plain jane two at a time socks.  I don't get how two at a time is faster than one at a time.  I'm pretty sure that I, at least, am slower this way.  So yes, doomed.  Up to my eyeballs.  Also, my thumb still hurts from when I sliced it making dinner the other day.  Go, me!

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.

Review: Susan Bates Quicksilver crochet hooks

These are my very favorite crochet hooks.  Made out of a special heat treated aluminum, they are smooth and light weight.  The most important thing to me, though, is the head -- these, like most Susan Bates hooks, have an inline head.  The head is slightly shallower than most Susan Bates hooks, however they still have that nice sharp edge so I find that it took some getting used to, but is not a problem.

The thing I really like about these hooks is the finish.  It feels almost powdery in the hands, and is very smooth for speedy hooking.  It isn't, however, TOO slippery -- I'm happy working with these hooks on everything from grippy wool to slickery bamboo.

The one issue I have with them is how easy it is to damage that finish.  That being said, I have kids who like to do thinks like repeatedly drop my hooks on the concrete to make them go "p-ting-ting!"  So my experience with that may be skewed.  But my kids aren't allowed to touch these hooks.  They are my favorite.

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.

So my daughter wants to learn to weave...

... so I need you weavers to level with me.  What am I getting myself into?  She tried a floor loom at Estes Park, and a rigid heddle loom at the county fair.  A floor loom is out of the question.  No space and no money.  A rigid heddle loom, though, seems to my innocent self doable.  It doesn't take up much space.  Apparently if you use two heddles you can make it work like a four shaft loom, so it's fairly versatile.  Seems like a good idea.

Or is it?  I mean, you go through yarn really fast when you weave, right?  That probably means the kid will end up with her own yarn stash.  Or I will at least end up buying lots more yarn.  And then there's the question of what to do with the random strips she makes.  We only need so many scarves and pot holders.

And what happens if I get into it?  I already have a very doom-y number of projects lying around my house at various levels of completion.  And my stash occasionally begins to frighten me.  Or maybe I can let her use up the less loved portions of my stash.  There we have it!  This is not just an education project, or a keep the big kid from scaling the house project, but a stash reduction project.  She likes weird acrylic yarn.  Heck, she likes ALL yarn.  This definitely has some possibilities.

Yeah, she's probably getting a little loom for her birthday.  Gotta start 'em young and all that.  And she can operate a loom by herself, unlike knitting, crochet, and knitting looms.  Because mommy already has too much yarning to do.

Broomstick crochet is making me mad.

Super duper slow progress, but progress none the less.

But it's not the pattern's fault, or the technique's fault.  It is entirely my own dang impatient self's fault.  First of all, none of the stores around here carry knitting needles big enough, so I had to make a makeshift tool out of a dowel.  I sanded it carefully and rubbed it with oil.  It is still way too grippy, even for my very slippery bamboo blend yarn.  So that's frustration number one.  Frustration number two: the loop row is SO FREAKING SLOW.  I'm sure it's a matter of practice.  I'm sure I will get faster.  But right now it's slow and I'm frustrated!  My other issue with it is if I screw up either the loop row or the crochet row, I have to rip out back to the beginning of the loop row.  I can't get the loops back onto the stick to save my life.  Sigh.  The result is so pretty!  I guess I need a break from it.  Maybe I'll work on those colorwork mittens that have been sitting untouched on my desk for so long.

And this is how I ended up with so many random WIPs lying around the house.  And to think, I WIPed down once already this year.  I'm doomed, but in a fun way.

Crochet Cables, the Tutorial!

Way back at the dawn of time (well, in January, but that feels like forever ago), I promised y'all a crochet cables tutorial.  I can finally knock that one off of the list of resolutions -- I have a lovely article in the premier issue of Crochetvolution in which I hope all cable questions will be answered.  It's titled "Crochet Cables -- Oh, Yes I Can!" and is available right now.  I hope you like it!